Tuesday, March 22, 2005


				
				
					 
					 
Happiness vs. Pleasure

					 
				

				


				
I'd like to rewind back to January, before I had this blog.  There I was, a younger, spryer (sprier?) self, reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being.  Falling in love with it.  Coming upon this following passage with something  akin to the eerie familiarity you feel when you're walking around in the basement and come upon your second-grade journal. 
Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line.  That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition. (298)
 vis-à-vis Dorian Gray's 
Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.
  The things that bring pleasure, in many ways, are actually the opposite of the things which bring happiness.  To long for pleasure is to long for novelty, which is why pleasures are fleeting and don't last.  Happiness can't be sought-after.  Happiness occurs accidentally, but once it happens, you want it to happen again and again.  Things that bring happiness bring happiness everytime.

Somehow it all seems more mundane when written out.


				


				

					posted by Debbie at 8:08 PM