There is a persistent misconception that happiness can be arrived at in time by getting this or that. But happiness really is not because of something. It cannot be because all things change so if we depend on something to derive happiness from it would also mean unhappiness. Pleasure means fear.

No object can truly alleviate the sense of suffering created by thought in fragmentary perception. Doesn't desire of anything in this world, which really is thought in fragmentary perception, means we make up time in which we burn?

Say we derive pleasure from earning a lot of money, then we fear of losing it and wake up at night troubled by what the central bank, politicians and all the people who we depend on do.

You think a silent house by the sea and a lot of money would make you happy? Would you feel happy there sitting on the porch looking at the sea and listening to the waves? Would you do that all day and it would it really make you happy? An island of peace among the turbulent world. Nice thought.. I'm not saying yes or no, but I question that. This is an ideal. For starters you simply don't have such a house and probably never will. Does that mean that you cannot be happy, content, free of suffering until (if) you get such a house in time?

OK, how about a lot of sex with a beautiful woman (women)? Nah.. that is a moment and one is exhausted and really a bit depressed. Surely we cannot make happiness dependent on sex. There have been people who had a lot of it but it didn't make them really happy.

A talk with a beautiful woman? About what? Fashion? Weather? Seeing her beauty? Why would she be with you when she would rather be with her friends, drinking, smoking cigarettes and dancing in a night club? Also she probably thinks she has to have a child and family to be happy.

 Oh, I see.. so she has to be beautiful and intelligent. Pretty much another ideal to get in time.

All those things done in fragmentary perception mean dispersion of energy in division between 'me and that', the perceiver and the perceived-possessed object. There is an inherent unsatisfactoriness in the division.

Do we even have time to get those illusive ideals made up by thought? Even if it was possible at all to get them?

Do we really have tomorrow in which we can work, strive towards the goals which will ultimately make us happy?

Or the only time we can be happy is here and now, fully? And the other is a dream, an illusion?