Quick! Read now before it’s too late!

I have to admit, pretty things make me happy. I am shallow, but at least I'm honest. January is one of my favourite times of year, just because of January sales. It's the only time where women become violent, sales assistants have no qualms about crying on shop floors, and small children get lost in mountains of reduced clothes.
However, much to my utter dismay, Topshop is full of shit and nowhere else is worth even mentioning. The January sales usually get me more excited than Christmas. However, this year they have been terrible. Am I alone in thinking this? I've seen quite a lot of complaints about the state of the sales on Facebook, and not once yet has somebody excitedly told me any great sale-related news. A recent article titled 'It's the end of the sales as we know them' highlights my point. (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article6974753.ece)
Ironically, this year I was more excited than ever about the sales, indicating the level of excitement in my life. This has made me wonder – do we set things up to fail by expecting too much? It seems that one irony of life that we may just have to accept is that we can be pleasantly surprised by things that we don't think we'll enjoy. However, we can only really be disappointed by things that we really look forward to.
Of course, it would be terribly pessimistic of me to say that my little theory can relate to everything; most of us look forward to things all of the time. But it's those special things that we anticipate for months that are usually anti-climatic. The things that we imagine going perfectly. The things that seem like they're going to be too good to be true (and usually are).
My friend's birthday last year is the perfect example of this. A big night out was, of course, planned. I got too drunk to leave the house and passed out on my bed. But being retold the night's events the next day – it seemed an uncharacteristically bad night for everyone else, too, including the birthday girl. And why? Because of the anticipation and the thought put into it all. Sod's law, in other words.
I think that looking forward to things is definitely one thing that gets us through life's dull routine. Getting through one thing by looking forward to another is just a second nature, really. But is it a dangerous thing to do? One of the reasons that people love spontaneity is because you can't be disappointed by something that you haven't put any thought into.
Men, if you were to ask girl out on a date, you'd be committing social suicide to arrange it any more than a week in advance. The longer you give a woman to look forward to a date, the better it has to be. Fact. It doesn't take long for us to subconsciously dream up the perfect date in our minds.
But would you rather play it safe and never look forward to things in order to avoid disappointment? There's something to ponder over next time you get bored in the bath. And they're always something to look forward to.