The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

by Daniel Z. Lieberman

Everything we do, ultimately, is for the sake of happiness.

Happiness is the polestar that guides our journey through life. When faced with a range of options, we choose the one that leads to the most happiness. Except we don’t.

The sensation of wanting is not a choice you make. It is a reaction to the things you encounter.

In a broad sense, saying something is “important” is another way of saying it’s linked to dopamine.

Sometimes the intensity of focus can be so great that your attention will get stuck on things that don’t matter at the expense of things that do.

Dopamine turns on the imagination, producing visions of a rosy future. What happens when the future becomes the present—when the dinner is in your mouth or your lover is in your arms? The feelings of excitement, enthusiasm, and energy dissipate. Dopamine has shut down. Dopamine circuits don’t process experience in the real world, only imaginary future possibilities. For many people it’s a letdown. They’re so attached to dopaminergic stimulation that they flee the present and take refuge in the comfortable world of their own imagination. “What will we do tomorrow?” they ask themselves as they chew their food, oblivious to the fact that they’re not even noticing this meal they had so eagerly anticipated. To travel hopefully is better than to arrive is the motto of the dopamine enthusiast.

The future isn’t real. It’s made up of a bundle of possibilities that exist only in our minds.