You only ever get to feel certain about the future once it's already turned into the past. - Oliver Burkeman

The point is certainly not that it's better not to have money, say, than it is to have it. But it's surely undeniable that if you don't have it, it's much harder to overinvest emotionally in it. The same goes for prestigious jobs, material possessions, or impressive educational qualifications: when you have little chance of obtaining them, you won't be misled into thinking they bring more happiness than they do.

When you give up the unwinnable struggle to do everything, that's when you can start pouring your finite time and attention into a handful of things that truly count. When you no longer demand perfection from your creative work, your relationships, or anything else, that's when you're free to plunge energetically into them. And when you stop making your sanity or self-worth dependent on first reaching a state of control that humans don't get to experience, you're able to start feeling sane and enjoying life now, which is the only time it ever is.

There is a very down-to-earth kind of liberation in grasping that there are certain truths about being a limited human from which you'll never be liberated. You don't get to dictate the course of events. And the paradoxical reward for accepting reality's constraints is that they no longer feel so constraining.