It took me many years to realize this, and God knows you may disagree, but the anticipation of something good will always, always be better than the actual thing itself.
The mind has a way of optimistically and unrealistically expecting upcoming times and events to be far greater than what you or I know they’ll actually be like. The fun, it seems, is in thinking about how great these times and events are going to be. It’s in the anticipation itself.
Expecting something to be great—looking forward to it, getting excited about it, envisioning how amazing it will be when it happens—these are all things that make life worthwhile. Vacations, roadtrips, holidays, graduations, new cities, new places, new jobs, new people; none of it is ever as good as you think it’ll be. And that’s okay.
It goes for weeks as well.
For the same reason I believe Sunday is the worst day of the seven—the thought of the coming workweek is enough to, ironically, cast a shade of depression over one of our only two days of freedom—Thursday is in fact, the best. It signals the anticipation of a coming weekend and all that it brings, which actually makes it better than the weekend itself.
In many ways, it’s a pure metaphor for life’s optimism. A particular weekend could turn out to be awful. But you’d better believe that on the Thursday night before, we’re looking forward to the Friday that kicks it off. And that anticipation feels pretty damn good.
Thursday feels pretty damn good.
Because real life isn’t spent exceeding expectations. It’s spent expecting to.
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