The strange pleasure of anticipation
Sometimes the good part starts early.
A dinner booked for Friday.
A trip that's still three weeks away.
Someone you're going to see.
Nothing has happened yet.
And still, every now and then, you catch yourself enjoying it.
Maybe we think of anticipation as simply waiting.
But waiting for something we want can become part of the experience itself.
We picture where we'll be.
What it might feel like.
The little details that haven't happened yet.
For a moment, something in the future gives something to the present.
And strangely, the imagining can sometimes feel almost as important as the thing we're imagining.
Sometimes part of the pleasure arrives before the thing itself.
Think of one small thing you're looking forward to.
Not the biggest thing on your calendar. Just something nice. Instead of skipping straight to it, spend a minute imagining one detail: where you'll be, what you'll see, what might make you laugh. See if a little of the experience arrives early.
Psychologists sometimes call this anticipatory pleasure.
It describes the positive emotion we can experience while imagining something enjoyable that hasn't happened yet.
Research suggests that anticipation itself can evoke strong positive emotions — sometimes even stronger than looking back on an experience afterwards.
And waiting for experiences such as trips, meals or entertainment tends to be more pleasurable and exciting than waiting for material purchases.
Based in part on research by Leaf Van Boven and Laurence Ashworth on anticipation and retrospection, and work by Amit Kumar, Matthew Killingsworth and Thomas Gilovich on the pleasure of anticipating experiences.