Airplanes and reality over expectations

Eric Weiner had a lovely post about his teenage niece on an airplane — utterly enthralled by the whole thing. The box that lifts into the sky and carries you across the world like a bird. Every part of it a marvel. It reminded me of an old Louis C.K. bit — everything is amazing, and nobody’s happy. He was brilliant at pointing out how easily we trade wonder for complaint. The seat is cramped, the wifi is slow, the flight is delayed. Meanwhile, we’re sitting in a chair in the sky. The underlying idea shows up everywhere: happiness is reality over expectations. The trap is to pour all our energy into the numerator. More, better, faster, growing reality. But the denominator sits untouched. Expectations quietly creep up, and no amount of growth ever catches them. And, worse, this happens while a little effort spent lowering expectations tends to return far more than a lot of effort spent raising reality.