I have never experienced the highs and lows of life in such quick succession as I have this week.
There I was on Sunday, singing United songs in the rain as the Bulgarian assassin single-handedly destroyed Liverpool.
Emotions were high as my friends came over for a wonderful reunion of house mates. I enjoyed feeding everyone and I welcomed a new week like I had never done before.
Then Monday came and I was feeling rough. On Tuesday I was ill but not as bad as on Wednesday and Thursday when I couldn’t even get to work. As I started to feel better today, I dragged my ass to the office and am glad I did, somehow feeling sorry for myself at home wasn’t doing me much good.
This just makes me think, is it better to ride a massive wave; success after success, happy moment after another, long periods of good health, with a massive failure to humble us to ground level every now and then? Or, is it better to be constantly reminded of mortality, of failure, of the dreams we failed to achieve? As a gambling enthusiast, I can’t help but think of life as a game of roulette; you can win many times in a row just to suffer a large loss at the end, or you can win once, lose once, over and over, never truly reaching that euphoria that a streak of wins provides; or the total emptiness of loosing it all at the end.
It makes you wonder, is happiness all about the experience we have or the memory of that experience? Daniel Kahneman tries to answer this…