Accepting Life’s Fleeting Nature Without Feeling Disillusioned

We are wired to chase the good and avoid the bad. Yet, despite understanding that life is in constant flux, we often act as though the highs should last longer than they realistically can. Promotions lose their luster, vacations fade into memory, and moments of joy slip through our fingers before we fully process them. This tension, between our desire for permanence and the reality of impermanence, is one of the most consistent sources of human frustration.

At the heart of this is a psychological tendency known as hedonic adaptation. This refers to our ability to quickly return to a baseline level of happiness after positive or negative changes. A new title at work comes with a surge of pride, but soon the responsibilities that accompany it overshadow the initial excitement. A long anticipated trip provides a temporary sense of escape, but the moment the return flight lands, reality sets in. The fact that we know this will happen does not prevent us from wanting things to last just a little longer.

Some of this is practical. If positive experiences were not rewarding, we would have no motivation to seek them. The problem is not that good things fade, but that we often fail to recognize the pattern. Rather than recognizing that our satisfaction naturally fades due to adaptation, we often assume something about the situation itself is lacking. The job must not have been as good as we thought. The vacation was too short. In reality, our perception has shifted; not the value of the experience itself.

This is not a reason to become indifferent. Some respond to the fleeting nature of life with detachment, believing that caring less is the only way to avoid disappointment. That is one approach, but it is a rigid one. There is an alternative that does not require numbing ourselves to what is good. Instead of trying to make the high points last, we can focus on engaging with them fully while they are present. Enjoyment is most intense when it is not clouded by an expectation that it should continue indefinitely.

Interestingly, the same adaptation that makes happiness fleeting also helps us recover from hardship. We may feel stuck in difficult moments, but just as joy fades, so does pain. Many of the same people who expect happiness to be permanent also treat struggle as if it has no end. The truth is that neither state is fixed. There is relief in accepting that every experience, good or bad, is a moving target.

Much of our frustration comes from a failure to align expectation with reality. We cannot hold on to experiences, but we can change how we engage with them. The goal is not to force joy to last, but to experience it without the expectation that it should. The more we accept impermanence, the less we struggle against it.