You can't always get what you wa-hant

I have been thinking about this all day:

"He soon felt that the realization of his longing gave him only one grain of the mountain of bliss he had anticipated. That realization showed him the eternal error men make by imagining that happiness consists in the gratification of their wishes."

Out of context this quote is a very good way to put the famous quote of "happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have".

In context it just makes me sad. A man feels unfulfilled in his relationship with his lover. It goes on to say: "When first he united his life with hers and donned civilian clothes, he felt the delight of freedom in general, such as he had not before known, and also the freedom of love - he was contented then, but not for long. Soon he felt rising in his soul a desire for desires - boredom. Involuntarily he began to snatch at every passing caprice, mistaking it for a desire and a purpose".

This made me think of part of a paper I wrote last year about Keat's Odes.
Line 15-18 "Ode to Psyche":

They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,

Cupid and psyche are embracing, but not actually kissing or doing anything. This is supposed to be good because fulfillment of desire is apparently what dissipates desire. If you do not actually perform the act, then the act cannot disappoint you or be over. In the next life, that passion will be perfected and will not be lost if you defer it for the present. I think that this idea ignores the possibility of the ability to desire something even when you have it and the ability of something to be even better than what you expected it to be.

I also think that some things make you happy whether you want them to or not. I particularly love that fact.

The "eternal mistake that men make" is a very sad one and causes a lot of heartache.
My lack of further expansion on these things is not laziness this time. I don't want to explain it all. It just makes me very sad.