Dan Gilbert gives the example of lottery winners often finding themselves extremely unhappy within years of winning as evidence of the idea that we often don’t know what will make us happy in the future. Even knowing that people often find themselves unhappy, I think most people would love to win the lottery and millions of people continue to buy lottery tickets just to have a slim chance of winning. I wished that he had spoken more about the idea of whether or not we will like the future when we get there. One question I would like to ask on this topic is: what are some of the circumstances that typically do bring people happiness in the future if they manage to achieve them? In other words, if winning the lottery provides a negative example of expectations of the future not matching reality, what would a positive example be?
top of page
bottom of page