Sara Ahmed

The very expectation of happiness gives us a specific image of the future. This is why happiness provides the emotional setting for disappointment, even if happiness is not given: we just have to expect happiness from “this or that” for “this and that” to be experienceable as objects of disappointment.

We could say that happiness is promised through proximity to certain objects. Objects would refer not only to physical or material things but also to anything that we imagine might lead us to happiness, including objects in the sense of values, practice, styles, as well as aspirations.

To promise after all is to make the future into an object, into something that can be declared in advance of its arrival.