The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

What keeps most people moving is not the pleasures already collected but the ones still expected. The mind lives slightly ahead of itself, and satisfaction, once it arrives, is quieter and shorter than the wanting was. It does explain why arriving somewhere you badly wanted often feels strangely flat.

Two things follow from that. Let the flatness be small without deciding the whole pursuit was a mistake, and give deliberate attention to what you already have, since it will never compete on volume with what you are hoping for. Choosing hopes worth having then matters more than chasing the feeling waiting at the end of them.