The Joys of Anticipation

So, a new song goes live at midnight tonight.

It got me thinking a little about anticipation.

Tom Petty once tried to tell us that 'the waiting is the hardest part'.

I'm not sure I agree.

If you're anything like me, you might even think the opposite.

In moments of anticipation, I often find myself at my happiest.

We know a little about why this is from a neurological point of view.

Dopamine is often miscredited as the pleasure hormone.

In fact, dopamine is a neurotransmitter that helps us encode the processes that lead us to pleasure.

Dopamine neurons become activated and release dopamine in response to stimuli that predict a reward: the walking to the shop for a packet of cigarettes, the transferring of funds into your bookmaker's account, the arriving at an airport before a summer vacation.

(Not Manchester Airport, though, which, as anyone will tell you, is hell on earth).

This process is crucial because it is thought to signal to the brain that an action is worth repeating.

If a hunter-gatherer comes to experience the natural markers and behaviors that tend to lead him towards a rich source of food, dopamine is the chemical that motivates him to repeat them by encoding them in the fibers of his nervous system.

In short: the anticipation of a reward increases dopamine release, which in turn motivates the repetition of behavior that results in achieving that reward.

Which is why levels of dopamine in the brain usually spike before we actually get whatever it is we're after.

The sad irony for dopaminergic creatures like us is that dopamine often isn't as high at the moment we actually get what we want.

It has already done its job.

Which is why our collective proverbial wisdom is full of sayings like 'It's the journey; not the destination'.

Even our oldest stories - the ones found in The Book of Genesis, for example - suggest that we simply can't be satisfied by a state of perpetual pleasure.

Adam and Eve have everything they could possibly want.

But it isn't enough.

We must always be moving forwards.

It's what makes us human.

Robert Browning said it best for me, in lines from his dramatic monologue Andrea Del Sarto that I've quoted before:

'Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?'

I hope Tom Petty is taking notes.

(He isn't; he's dead. And I hope, in whichever state he currently does or doesn't exist, he forgives me. We love you, Tom).

When we're waiting for something, working for something, slowly building up to something, the future exists in a pristine state of unrealized potential.

And that's a pretty joyous place to be.

For me, happiness has always come as a byproduct of feeling purposeful.

I've never been particularly good at 'living in the moment'.

So the pleasure of a new song for me is in the writing, the recording, the uploading, the assembling artifacts - recording social media clips, writing a pitch for streaming and radio, setting up online ads to drive people to it.

Hopefully, the pleasure of listening to it will be yours.

"Wherever We Go" releases at midnight tonight.

I'd love to hear what you think.

More and more of you have been emailing recently to talk music and share your thoughts, from as far afield as Australia and America - please keep them coming.

I love discovering who you are and getting to know you better.

And, as always...

Keep dreaming,

Rob