Mind Moves:The prospect of a good time at the end of a stressful work week is a pleasure we all savour. We have given our all at the office, we have done the State some service and now it's time for "me".
It will be a night for relaxation. And what a night it will be.
We craft a fantasy of celebration in our minds, refining and embellishing it until we have it just right.
We tolerate loose ends at work and rush hour traffic. We deal with domestic details. We do it all because our mind is fixated on the bliss that beckons us forward.
And it could be just a movie and pizza.
But we know it won't just be any old pizza or any old movie. It will be the best pizza ever, and the movie will hold us spellbound.
The moment finally arrives. It's okay, but not the transcendent experience we imagined it would be.
Maybe we should have eaten out instead of in. Maybe we should have rented a different movie. Maybe we should have been a little more sociable and accepted that barbecue invitation from the neighbours.
Nothing bad happened, nobody died, but something wasn't quite right.
Considering the care we invested in crafting this five-star fantasy, our dream celebration should have delivered a lot more punch. Or so we think.
What is it about humans that we so often find reality something of a let down?
I suspect we are most likely to do this when the ratio of "shoulds" to "wants" in our life is seriously unbalanced.
This can happen when we become so preoccupied with pressures in our work lives that we ignore on a daily basis those activities that relax and rejuvenate us.
So we approach the weekend exhausted and in tatters. Then we load one precious event with an expectation that it cannot bear.
If our evening is not quite living up to expectations, we resort to the principle that more is better.
We eat too much, we drink more than we should, we stay out too late or we watch too much TV. We do it all in the hope that we can squeeze from that one moment the fun we have been deprived of all week.
And the following morning, exhausted and hung over, we wake with an even stronger feeling that our lives are out of control.
At this time of the year, there is much talk about the number of external pressures facing large segments of our population.
Exams and the like are real pressures that require concentration and courage from those facing them. They also require an ocean of patience and moral support from bystanders.
But there are also those more subtle stresses that we create within our own minds that take just as much out of us than the above.
It's an old cliche that it's not where we are that determines our happiness but rather the state of mind we're in.
Our wellbeing comes from being able to engage with life as it unfolds in each moment and make the most of it.
When we base our happiness on contingency - when I have X or when Y happens I will be happy - we run the risk of never finding peace within ourselves.
Rather than planning furiously for a time in the future when we will be happy, we need look to what is happening now.
We need to experience the unique possibilities that are offered by whatever is happening now.
Life rarely measures up to your perfectionism, but it can take you by surprise when you allow things to be just the way they are.
The morning after the week's great "anti-climax", you walk to the video store to return the movie. You bump into an old friend or a neighbour from down the street.
Suspended in a timeless moment you become engrossed in a conversation about some fascinating nonsense of no importance whatsoever.
But as you walk away you feel an elusive sensation of joy rise up inside you. And before you know it, completely out of the blue, you have found your happy feet once more.
I remember a time when we were renovating our family home and the builders dumped an increasing mountain of rubble in our small front garden.
I opened the front door one day to find my next door neighbour standing on our doorstep looking down at the chaos that marred both our properties.
I felt embarrassed as he drew my attention to something that he had noticed. I imagined he was about to complain about the mess, as that was all I could see.
But he pointed out the first pink blossom of a Clematus bush which had forged its head above the devastation.
In that moment I became aware of the choices we all have in constructing reality and I realised that in every stressful moment there is always something new breaking through that should be enjoyed and celebrated.
Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong - The National Centre for Youth Mental Health.
