Desire is the key to many things, but seldom is happiness amongst them. It is not the lack of things that drives us, but the want for them. I know, I know, tell that to the starving…
I was thirteen, maybe fourteen, and yet my nose was almost as close to the shop window as it had been to jars of sweeties, liquorice, and sherbet-filled flying saucers made of rice paper, when I was six. My breath dulled the plate glass with its mist, and I knew that on it was the tang, the ketones of a mouth dry with longing... Almost beyond resisting was the urge to take a fingernail and etch into the condensation the name of my object – start with a D, and an I, then a careful A, then hurry through B, L, and another A.
I had to shift my weight from my left foot to my right, assume the nonchalant pose of an uncommitted window-shopper, and look past the steamed patch of glass again, to my object. There was a stone lodged in my solar plexus, and absurd wetness between my legs, as I caught again a clear view. A pair of Diabla shoes: deep red sunburst over skimpy, insubstantial leather, fading from bright cherry, through luscious burgundy, to almost-black… round-toed, high and stacked heel, and an ankle-strap which begged for me to be further enslaved by it.
How many weeks’ allowance did I mortgage for them? Oh who cares, who cared? But I spun out the desire as I walked casually into the shop, caught the attention of the assistant, tried on other styles, and eventually… “Do you have the Diabla in my size?” And when I got them home, nothing persuaded me to wear them again before their time. I sat and looked at them for a long while; then, to conjure the desire once again, I hid them in the bottom of my closet, and imagined I could hear a faint but persuasive voice – “Long for me, wear me, be beautiful, be a slut…”
Honorable mention
Adding your comment:
You don't fool me. There be naked womens there! 
C. S. Lewis echoes your thought too - it's the anticipation the pursuit of happiness that brings joy, not necessarily the object itself.
