He explained to her how he had anticipated and looked forward with great intensity to their first time together. And now that it was behind them, he felt a bit lost … almost as if he had lost something precious. Weird? Romantic? Yes, a bit of both, but doesn’t it happen to all of us at some point or other? We tend to get so caught up in the anticipation that not only do we forget to enjoy present moments but are at a total loss once we achieve what we desired!
It is true that the thrill of anticipation never does quite match the realisation. And, some of the most powerful experiences in life are those that never met fruition. In fact, according to a theory called the Zeigarnik effect, there is a psychological tendency to more vividly remember an uncompleted rather than a completed task. Memories are more vivid where the agenda has not been completed.
A gaze frozen in time can rekindle romantic memories through a lifetime, far more than if it had become a tangible reality. Indeed I do still recall the thrill of the furtive glances sent my way by an unnamed boy way back in the school bus. In that entire year of going back and forth from school, we looked but never exchanged a word with each other, nor knew each other’s names!
Think of when you receive a gift. The highpoint is the moment just before the wrapping comes off. And most of us like to prolong that moment. Once opened, the gift becomes a mundane part of life.
Or, the act of lovemaking. All the pleasure, the trembling excitement is part of the anticipation. Poised on the edge of the precipice, fevered passion can only possibly take a downswing from here onwards…
All your life you hanker after those solitaires, enjoying plenty pleasurable moments anticipating the moment you will own them. The moment comes and goes -- and suddenly those solitaires are a possession, a reality of your everyday existence. What then? Soon enough you hanker after something else! For it’s that hankering that gives you your adrenaline shots more than the acquisition.
If the pleasure is more in the hunt than in acquisition, and anticipation is far more exciting than fulfillment, why does one seek a culmination of desire at all? It is at the point when we are poised on the brink of fulfillment that life’s most intensely pleasurable moments reside -- when our desire is just about to be fulfilled. Chocolate tastes the best between first bite and just the moment before we swallow it — and then…it’s over, leaving behind a lingering guilt! There is a deep intensity in that one moment just before anticipation takes the shape of reality. Were it possible to string together those moments, the awesome intensity would be unbearable!
“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive,” said Robert Louis Stevenson. Living on the edge of discovery, to be poised on the verge is far more thrilling than the plunge itself.
But so focused are we on the destination, and so conditioned to be goal-oriented that we forget to enjoy the moments of expectation that await us on the brink of fulfillment. Right from childhood we are taught the importance of focusing on and achieving our goals. We are never told that what matters is excellence — not perfection or culmination. Seldom is a child taught to enjoy the journey as he goes along. Living on the edge of discovery, standing poised on the verge of achievement is always far more pleasurable than the achievement itself. That’s the lesson we all come across again and again in life….
Would that love forever retained the thrill of anticipation and never became a harsh reality; would that the moment just before those solitaires are touched remained frozen in time; would that the gift remained just one fold beyond the wrapping paper…
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