expectation

I'm discovering more and more that the problem with consumerism is the expectation of getting happy. Let me unpack that a little.
It seems to me that when something good happens that I don't expect I experience joy more than when I get something I was expecting. Somehow my expectation deminishes the joy I end up experiencing. So the more expectations I have, the less I enjoy anything.
Now the killer is this. If I have an expectation that is not met then I'm really crushed. But I'm not affected when I don't get what I don't expect.
Think about this in terms of relationships. When someone does something for me that I wasn't expecting I get a real buzz. But when they do something I expected from them then I'm just as likely to wonder why they didn't do it better, sooner or greater.
Well my head hurts from too much deep thinking. But what did you expect!