In their book “Engineering Happiness”, economists Rakesh Sarin and Manel Baucells talk about the “fundamental question of wellbeing: reality minus expectations. Raise expectations beyond reality’s capacity to realise them and misery follows. The reverse also applies: you can make people happier by delivering bad news, then withdrawing it. The idea is that you advertise a
great deal, get the customer excited, then say, “unfortunately, you are just a day too late. The offer finished yesterday. But let me just have a word with the boss”. Two minutes later you return and tell the customer, “the boss needed a bit of persuasion, but he’ll make an exception just for you”. Big smiles all round! (Reported in The Week).

With my wife we wrote a musical. I imagined it on Broadway and got excited. A dream. Broadway never happened. Expectations far too high. Now I have trained myself to expect nothing, but to be surprised and delighted if anyone so much as remembers that we write music. Be thankful for small surprises – the Epicurean way.