I first came across this pithy description in an interview with Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis.

It brilliantly condenses the observation that dogs spend a lot of time thinking about and chasing cars.

But they don't know what to do with a car when they actually catch one.

Gaddis believes this, in a nutshell, is what has happened to the Bush administration in Iraq.

I believe it also applies to much of what we do in our individual, daily lives.

How many of us, myself first and foremost, set goals, believing that once we achieve them, everything will be hunky dory, only to find, time and again, that in fact, the achievement is rather hollow and unfulfilling, after all that effort?