I project an image of a future where I’m eating cake. I can taste it in my mind’s taste buds. And I want the imagined sensation of eating cake to be real.
But I’m confused. I’m having the sensation now, but in my confusion I think that when I eat cake later it will be different in some way from what I’m experiencing now. When I actually eat it, it is never any better than I imagine it to be.
It is impossible to experience anything without projecting the experience in my mind, so the future “real” cake will be no more real than “imagined” cake happening now. They’re BOTH imagined.
When I realize that the cake I’m imagining now is just as “real” as the “real” cake I’d be having later, who needs to bother with any “real” cake at all? I see no reason to delay the gratification. I just enjoy the cake that’s in my mind now.
The future never comes.
All I have is now.
So if I really want to be happy, I enjoy what’s happening now.