Triple joy

Shared joy is double joy, according to a Swedish proverb. My claim is this: postponing happiness adds an extra multiplier to it. That is, for joy, you are intrinsically and consciously willing to put off.

Now it seems that the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment has aged. In this experiment, children were given one marshmallow and were told that if they wouldn’t eat it and wait for a little while, they would get another marshmallow. Keep in mind that, as a kid, with a marshmallow underneath your nose, fifteen minutes feel like an eternity. Scientists believed that the kids who went through the effort of waiting did better in life later on.

This theory has recently been debunked. New evidence shows that the kids who wait for the marshmallow aren’t necessarily outperforming their so-called greedier counterparts.

Regardless of the ability of a (young) child to resist temptation, there is a large body of literature claiming many beneficial effects related to deferred gratification. As our world becomes increasingly frictionless, patience is a virtue that most of us lack, today maybe more so than ever before.

Good things come to those who wait. We have to be willing to wait and encourage this behavior in ourselves and children to go from double joy, to triple joy.

If you think it’s too hot, it probably is

It’s Saturday morning, and you decide to grind some East-African coffee beans. You’re fancy like that. You brew a cup of joe. Eager to taste the black gold, you put your lips to the steaming cup. You hesitate, pause and think for a second about the temperature of the coffee. It’s probably too hot.

How will you know for sure, though? You take a sip. Guess what. It’s too hot.

Completely neglecting the fact you were able to witness steam emerging from your cup seconds ago.

You don’t always need sensory input to believe (in something).

Revisit with caution

Nostalgia is overrated and easy to exploit. As it turns out, people aren’t reluctant to spend top currency for items, services, or experiences that hold nostalgic value to them.

Our brains are tricky like that. As a protection mechanism, they sometimes sugar coat the past for us. How awfully nice of them. As a result, past experiences may seem better now than they did at that moment in time. It’s like an Instagram filter for the mind. Visualizing experiences with brighter, more vibrant colors. Omitting (proverbial) grey rainy days from our memories, while we’re at it.

Agatha Christie once said: “Never go back to a place where you have been happy. Until you do it remains alive for you. If you go back it will be destroyed.” In other words, don’t be a buzzkill and keep the magic alive.

It’s always risky to fall in love with an idea, both past- and present ideas. Thinking back of places where you used to live makes you reminisce about the concept of yourself as a person, and perhaps even miss your former self. That’s a slippery slope. If we are somehow under the impression that we used to be happier in the past, we long for a version of ourselves that is no longer there. In doing so, we neglect the fact that we’ve undoubtedly grown as a person, and in true – dwell on the past – style, regret the passing of time.

I wouldn’t go as far, saying you should never go back to a place where you have been happy. Manage your expectations and be aware that the tingle in your spine you are chasing is probably no longer there; it was with you all along.