As adults we are well acquainted with reality and yet we constantly expect and hope for far more than we know can ever be delivered. This is idiocy and arrogance. We know how the world works, how much it costs and how people like to cut corners. A little thought and a little logic would rein in our runaway dreams and ensure that we are never disappointed again. No more will we be glass-half-full or glass-half-empty people. We will just be a people grateful for having a glass.
Take the opening of The Shard during the week. London's newest, biggest building. In fact it is the tallest building in Western Europe. For the time being.
According to news reports the general feeling was that people - i.e. the hoi polloi, you and me and your mama too - were a tad disappointed by the opening ceremony. It was something of a let down.
I must admit I didn't watch it but just caught the highlights on Newsround (I have kids, OK, what scope do you think I have to watch News24 these days?) - enough in itself to remove the high and the light from any ceremony.
I saw light displays from within the building itself and a laser show from the extremeties of the building. Admittedly there were no fireworks (that I saw) but I dare say they are stockpiling those for the Olympics.
The opening ceremony seemed perfectly adequate to my mind. It's a building, for God's sake. What were people expecting it to do? Develop rocket thrusters Autobot style and blast off to the moon?
It's a building.
Back when I was a kid a new building was opened by having a local celeb cut a pink ribbon in front of the doors and then everyone downed a cheap glass of Liebfraumilch in the foyer and that was it. You counted yourself lucky if you were presented with a sausage and a pineapple chunk on a stick.
It's a building. It doesn't do anything but stand there and gradually fall into decay by the unstoppable effects of entropy.
Be grateful for the coloured lights and the lasers.
Even if they'd installed nude can-can dancers on the top floor no-one would have seen them.
At the end of the day this building is nothing more than an icon and a trophy for the rich and smug affluent enough to live and work there.
Personally I have already re-christened it The Shed and I do hope you will all assist my attempts to see that this new monicker soon catches on.
As for the aesthetics of the building itself... well, I've seen worse. At least it doesn't look like a car park.
One thing does worry me though.
I'm sure London's newest erection has a twin somewhere in Mordor.
Should we be worried?