British Philosopher Alan Watts uses dance and music as analogies for life:
Unlike traffic where the goal is to get from A to B as quickly as possible, we don’t aim to get to a certain point in the room when we’re dancing.
We simply dance to dance.
Watts applies the same reasoning to music: the point of a composition isn’t to get to the end quickly. If that were the case, orchestras would be playing pieces as fast possible. Or worse: compositions would only include finales and nothing else.
We compose to compose.
It is possible to see life as pilgrimage, where you can only be happy and whole at some distant point in the future.
Or, in the words of Watts, can see life as “a musical thing, where you [are] supposed to sing, or to dance, while the music [is] being played”.
If everything in life is calculated towards some specific future milestone, then that would mean going through life as though it is an A to B journey. What happens after B? Might be that not everyone wants to know....so they never quite get there.
Initial response: I don't know that the ability to project into the future is incompatible with Watt's perspective. It seems perfectly possible that one could project into the future towards a B while full acknowledging that the process of getting to B (calculations and all) is the experience that is ultimately worth savoring & paying close attention to.
My sense is that Watt's biggest problem with seeing life as a journey is that many are socialized to believe that the purpose of life is to ascend one mountain after another, with the ascension being a price to pay rather than something of value in and of itself.
Re: what happens after B. I think B just gets displaced with another B. Hedonic treadmill and all.