A few moments are perfect, like the movies. Everyone is beautiful. The conversation is clever. Laughs are haughty. Someone speaks another language to the foreign waiter. Everyone is in love. We think to ourselves, it can’t get better than this.

I think of Nietzsche’s idea of eternal recurrence. The idea that even just one perfect moment can make an entire life of less-than-perfect moments worth reliving.

Unsuccessful people give into short-term pleasures in normal everyday moments. Successful people spend the normal moments preparing to make the perfect ones possible.