The Horizon That Never Comes
I was journaling around a quote from Epictetus recently:
"It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what we don't have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn't be hunger or thirst."
And he’s right, isn’t he? Yet we spend so much of our lives convinced that happiness is just beyond the next milestone. If I can just... get that job, find that person, buy that house, finish this project... then I’ll be happy. But the horizon never stops expanding in front of us, a shimmering mirage we’re forever treading water toward but never quite reaching.
I blame structure. We’re raised to follow a sequence. Nursery, primary school, secondary school, university (if we’re lucky or daft enough), a job, maybe more university, another job, relationships, kids, their schools, their universities, their jobs... And in all this, we convince ourselves that meaning and happiness are bound up in hitting these milestones. But what happens when you’ve checked off the last big goal? You start looking for a new one, or worse, you feel completely adrift, wondering where to swim next. Because if happiness is always over there, then it’s never here.
Lately, I’ve been trying to make an effort to let go of that kind of thinking. To stop being so structured, so goal-oriented, and to just... be. To not grieve things I thought I needed to be happy. To notice the happiness in the small, ordinary things.
Children, of course, provide an endless supply of these moments. The unexpected, ridiculous, chaotic joy of life with small humans, like when Alex works out how lids operate and suddenly he's smearing Sudocrem everywhere. Or when they say something so profoundly funny that you have to step out of the room to laugh properly. (My niece Aurora is a great one for this.)
But it’s not just kids. It’s in a particularly excellent tree (as I’ve said before, never underestimate a good tree). It’s in a play that lingers in your mind long after the curtain falls. It’s in the perfect alignment of a moment, the right book, the right light, the right silence. It’s in solitude that feels full rather than empty.
And here’s the kicker: happiness isn’t just some indulgent luxury. There’s solid science backing up its impact. I was listening to a programme recently that highlighted how happiness is one of the biggest predictors of good health. Studies have shown that people who rate themselves as happier tend to live longer, have stronger immune systems, and recover from illnesses more quickly. The Harvard Study of Adult Development; a wildly long-running research project found that the quality of relationships and overall life satisfaction were more predictive of long-term health than cholesterol levels.
Basically, being happy might be better for you than laying off the cheese. Which feels like an excellent justification for prioritising joy over structure.
So for now, I’m stepping back from the relentless pursuit of the next thing. I’m taking more pleasure in the present, in whatever weird, wonderful or even slightly infuriating thing life throws my way. The horizon can wait. There’s too much good stuff right here.