Room Enough to Receive It?

Excerpts from an interesting Washington Post article today:

Why do people who get what they want rarely end up as happy as they expected, while people who fail to achieve dreams rarely end up as unhappy as they feared? Systematic experiments show that as strongly as we hold onto our dreams and fear setbacks, we are poor judges of what will make us happy and unhappy.

Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert has made it his life's work to understand why people not only make errors in predicting what will make them happy, but also why they make the same errors over and over again.

"For as long as anyone can remember," Gilbert once noted, "people have hungered for information about their personal futures, confident that if they knew their fates, they would also know their fortunes. Alas, knowing the future is not the same as knowing how much one will like it when one gets there."

--Shankar Vedantam, "C'mon, Get Happy? It's Easier Said Than Done," The Washington Post, Jan. 8, 2008, at A10.

This modern research reflects an ancient wisdom:

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory . . . . -- Ephesians 3: 20 (New Testament)

Or, even older than that:

Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out such a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. -- Malachi 3: 10 (Old Testament)