Almost, but not quite

I still remember this whole quarter-life crisis e-mail that was being sent around to all my friends when I turned 25. It was given to me by my good friend Tamara. She told me to stop fretting and that things were going well.

It's been two years, and I still don't think so.

It's not that I'm a pessimist or anything, but I have this feeling I should've been somewhere else by 27.

Sure, I have a great job, a great group (READ: Dysfunctional) of friends and some of the best (again, dysfunctional) family members in the world.

But 10 years ago, this isn't what I had mapped out.

In 1997, I wrote somewhere that I wanted to be married with child No. 2 on the way. I wanted to live in a house with my wife where we both took care of home with our perspective jobs. I wanted to be in the best shape of my life because that's what tennis was going to bring me.

I'm making more than I thought I would be by now. The house is deferred til next year because of credit rebuilding. That wife and kids thing hasn't happened. And I'm in the best shape of... the last three years.

There's some good and some bad, but it's not how I'd mapped it out.

My question is this: Why do we strive for what we want instead of what makes us happy?