system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Help understanding Kierkegaard's "Pleasure disappoints, possibility never."

"If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. " - Soren Kierkegaard

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How can pleasure disappoint? Wouldn't possibility be disappointing without some sort of reward (ie-pleasure)? 


I can understand that the seeking of pleasure is disappointing, or the aftermath of it...but not pleasure in itself, no more than possibility is disappointing without pleasure.
gpt
Here, Kierkegaard has equated "Pleasure" with "wealth and power"- obviously meaning material pleasures.  This is a true-ism we see time and time again in literature.  How many stories are there of people who strive for wealth and power, only to find those things empty and unfulfilling.  The joys brought on by material pleasures are shallow, fleeting, and in the end, the are never as good as you THINK they will be. They are chocked to death by our disappointment that they do not live up to what we thought they would.  The potential.

It's that joy in the potential that is greater.  It pushes you forward, ever expanding.  The joy of the potential is that joy of hunger, of future, of striving. After the realization of that potential, the doors are closed, and you can never go back again. 

Imagining the feast is always a better feeling than having consumed the feast.

Kierkegaard is talking about hope. Living in the passionate sense of potential is living with hope.  And hope dies when potential dies, especially when that potential dies by achieving material ends.  Hope ends with fruition. It never endures.