Our doubts tend to be about whether we can get the satisfactions that we seek, not about the nature of these satisfactions.

If you live in a past dream, you don’t enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is. There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive. Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self-pity, suffering, and tears.

At the end of my life, I believe the primary thing I’ll fear having missed out on is the pursuit of thick desires. Desires that I’ll feel satisfied about having poured myself out for. If I’m going to die of exhaustion—and, eventually, all of us will—it’s not going to be from chasing thin desires.

(the most satisfying pleasures are the surprising ones, the ones that can’t be engineered).