Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. I don’t think most of us realize that’s what it is. I think we go about desiring things all day long and then wonder why we’re unhappy.

Rousseau’s comparison of the levels of happiness of primitive and modern man returns us to William James’s emphasis on the role of expectations in determining levels of happiness. We may be happy with little when we have come to expect little. And we may be miserable with much when we have been taught to expect everything.

Mais méfiez-vous. Comme le disait Pascal, « nous ne vivons jamais, mais nous espérons de vivre ; et, nous disposant toujours à être heureux, il est inévitable que nous ne le soyons jamais ». Chercher la réussite n’apporte jamais que le manque de succès futur. Le désir est inquiet et le bonheur, quiétude.

There is really only one kind of happiness that society values, and that’s the kind that society is comfortable with: the kind that is far enough removed from genuine contentment that nobody feels pressured to consider how unfulfilling their own lives are.