A few moments are perfect, like the movies. Everyone is beautiful. The conversation is clever. Laughs are haughty. Someone speaks another language to the foreign waiter. Everyone is having a good time. We think to ourselves, it can’t get better than this.
I think of Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. The idea that even just one perfect moment can make an entire life of less-than-perfect moments worth reliving.
Unsuccessful people give into short-term pleasures in normal everyday moments. Successful people spend the normal moments preparing to make the perfect ones possible.