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What the Rolling Stones Taught Me About Goal-Setting and Happiness
If Keith Richards continues his remarkable string of improbable days on this planet a little longer, I’ll finally realize a longtime, once-thwarted goal and see the Rolling Stones live in concert. I know it will make me happy. But already the Stones have brought happiness to our household — by blowing us off two years ago.
See, back in 2016, my wife and I had tickets to see them in Vegas. On the morning of, just as we were preparing to make the five-hour drive from Phoenix, I got an email from the ticket service: “We regret to inform you that The Rolling Stones concert scheduled for Wednesday, October 19 at T-Mobile Arena has been cancelled. Lead vocalist Mick Jagger has come down with laryngitis and has been advised by doctors to rest his voice.” No rescheduling. Money refunded.
I was seriously disappointed. My wife was irrationally devastated. The hollow feeling lasted days, weeks, the way the death of a loved creates a lingering, nagging, subconscious gloom of a persistent low-pressure system.
But in that tragic First World moment, something dawned on me: Live music has few peers in bringing joy, but in our hectic modern lives we rarely committed to do anything about it.
We should see more concerts, I decided.
