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Should I play the Short-Game or Long-Game for Happiness?

So today I had another great session with Marc.

We started off talking about the age-old concept of delayed gratification and long-term vs short-term happiness.

I have found that for the past 8ish months I have been in mental pursuit of whether to take a long-term or short-term happiness approach to life.

Choosing to delay instant pleasure for a larger, long-term goal is an approach I have taken for most of my life. When I was younger it was always sports: first hockey, followed by football and finally rugby. I was constantly trying to get my self to make sacrifices and spend a significant amount of time training for these sports, so I could eventually make achieve a goal. Often these goals were making a certain team: whether it was a AAA hockey team, or and National rugby team. But there was always a loftier goal in mind as well... for example, playing for the Canadian National Team in Rugby or making the NHL for hockey.

This approach because I did feel an immense pleasure when I achieved these goals. And I did derive a lot of my pleasure from external achievements. This approach also satisfied an internal desire I naturally have (or it at least feels natural) to do more with my time, than simply watch Youtube videos of awkward public pranks or sing along to my favourite One Direction songs in my room (things that bring me instant pleasure, with very little work).

This approach is embraced by a huge portion of the world... look no further than the general idea that we should delay our happiness and work our asses off during University and in our job, so we can get the highest paying job possible... that will allow us to do lavish shit during our vacation time and retire early.

But for the last 8ish months I have been questioning this approach. It first started by questioning a subliminal desire I had: a desire to be recognized, famous and remembered. The idea in my head was something like: “in the end, all the sacrifices will be worth it, if you can do something so great that would make you famous, and eventually help you be remembered forever”. I would often visualization people I went to high school with talking to the hair dresser 10 or 20 years from now saying “You know Evan Beck of course? Yeah... I actually went to high school with that guy”.

But then I realized that nothing is forever. As my Professor in Bio 350 said “Time will eventually erase, all that we are and all that we have done!”. So the “permanent” appeal of notoriety/fame then felt completely lost.

And then I started to find more holes in the “delayed-gratification long-term goal philosophy”. Like, what if you die before you achieve your desired goal? Then you will never get to experience the gratification you delayed for so long. You won’t get the feeling of accomplishment, but rather a feeling of disappointment.

Or something happens, and you are now unable to achieve that goal? For example, you become paralyzed after dreaming to play professional football you whole life. I don’t care how many motivational speakers tell you to keep trying... if you physically can’t walk, you need to give up on the idea that you will play in the NHL.

Or what if it just never happens? Dreams are hard... that’s why they are dreams. What if you work your ass off for your entire life, and it just never works out for ya? You spend you whole life delaying your happiness, in hopes of eventually achieving your ultimate dream, sitting back on a beach in Mexico... and living happily ever-after.

A finally, what if your long-term goal doesn’t end up bringing you that much gratification when you finally achieve it? You get into the dream school or you get the dream job, and it just... it just doesn’t bring you nearly as much happiness as you thought it would. At this point, you have sacrificed so much happiness for something that wasn’t that great in the end. Well... now what?

Maybe an instant gratification philosophy is a better one to take? A certain amount of pleasure is always guaranteed. Although this pleasure is likely going to be in smaller amounts (eating one slice of pizza is generally not as enjoyable as having girls/guys constantly flocking to you because you have a slender beach bod)... it will be more often (you can eat pizza, like, literally all the time; people will only drool over your rockin’ body once in a while... and AFTER you have put in a lot of effort to get that rocking bod... and IF you even are able to get that bod). There is definitely something to be said for doing whatever you want, so that you can enjoy the present moment as much as possible.

But a hedonistic lifestyle where we all just sit at home eating shitty food and watching copious amounts of Youtube videos... is also not something I want on a macro scale.

All this rambling to say that a balance between the two, seems to be the right way to go about it. But then again, when should you choose the short-game and when should you choose the long-game? How much happiness should you delay? And for how long? Hmmmmm...

And yes, I do realize that this blog approaches both philosophies in an overly-simplistic, black-and-white manner. But not doing so, only makes things more complicated and presents more questions like the ones I posed in the last paragraph^^.

#anxiety #mental health #happiness #delayed-gratification