Pleasure is Waiting for You… Right Here and Now

From Singing in the World (#1) by Rabbi Avigdor Miller 

Some Jews think this world is suffering; It’s only affliction. He thinks, “I’ll get it [my pleasures] all in the next world, that’s where it’s waiting for me.” 

So as he sits for his breakfast eating eggs and butter and jam on his bread. He’s afflicting himself with coffee and cream. And he’s so sad at his plight in this world. At lunchtime again he goes through the whole torture all over again — and he’s waiting for the Next World; there, at least, he’ll be repaid. There all his pious deeds, his Torah, his mitzvos, will be paid back. 

When the time comes and he comes to Gan (the Garden of) Eden and knocks on the door, he’s in for a big surprise. They tell him you paid it all up already.

“But I got no fun out of it,” he says. 

But it makes no difference, “You had [your pleasure]! If you would have had fun out of it, then we would have rewarded you. You had no fun, you didn’t make a bracha (blessing)! You didn’t thank Hashem.” 

He says, “I did, I never missed a bracha in my life.” So Hashem tells him,  “Look: in this world everything is Mine. ‘L’Hashem ha’aretz u’meloah — Everything belongs to Me.’” 

But he’ll say, “then it says ‘v’haaretz nossan l’bnei adam — you gave the earth to the sons of man.’” So Hashem says yes: “Kan kodem bracha kan achar bracha — Before the bracha it’s Mine, after the bracha it’s yours.’ The bracha is the coin with which you pay Me.”
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Hashem says Even though you made brachos, you’re a counterfeit because you didn’t mean them. You didn’t have any intent when you said it because you really didn’t think I was giving you anything good in this world. You were thinking that I’m the one who owes you. While you were destroying so many pounds of bread and so many gallons of milk and so many vats of butter and so many head of steer in this world, you were thinking that you’re getting nothing from Me. So you didn’t give a bracha, it was counterfeit. You didn’t learn to be grateful.