Futile Pursuit

An old joke tells about a farmer’s dog that used to wait for vehicles to come around. As soon as one appeared he would run down the road, barking and trying to overtake it. One day a neighbour asked the farmer ‘Do you think your dog is ever going to catch a car?’ The farmer replied, ‘That is not what bothers me. What bothers me is what he would do if he ever caught one.’

The dogs are plain playful or taking on an imagined foe. But, we must ponder whether we are in futile pursuit of meaningless goals. We need to ask ourselves whether we will find the goal to be worth the pursuit if we were to attain it.

Daniel Gilbert and Loewenstein found through multiple experiments that humans can never be as happy as we think we will be with an outcome. The research goes into depth about human decision-making and the affects of our decisions.  What Gilbert has found is that we overestimate the intensity and the duration of our emotional reactions – our “affect” – to future events.

For instance, we might believe that a new car will make life perfect. But, surely, it will not be as exciting as we anticipated; nor will it excite us for as long as predicted. Aldous Huxley said it well: ‘Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.’

So often, we set out in futile pursuit...
when at hand lies the happiness fruit!

- Pravin K. Sabnis

Goa, India.