Unhappy individuals who hope never have the same pain as those who remember. Hoping individuals always have a more gratifying disappointment. The unhappiest one will always, therefore, be found among the unhappy rememberers.

…

This is what it amounts to: on the one hand, he constantly hopes for something he should be remembering, his hope is constantly disappointed, but on its being disappointed he discovers that the reason is not that the goal has been moved further on but that he has gone past it, that it has already been experienced, or is supposed to have been, and has thus passed over into memory.

Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
Søren Kierkegaard