Pleasure vs Happiness

I’ve pondered a lot about our conversation yesterday, about the darkness that has a place in you. Wishing I could somehow help you fill the void.
There’s a principle I want to share with you. Perhaps you already know it. Actually we all know it, sometimes we just lose sight of it.
There are certain universal truths that we attempt to ignore or defy at our own peril. If a fool walks off a cliff he doesn’t defy gravity he reinforces it. If we place our exposed flesh into a flame it will be consumed.
Just as there are immutable physical forces in the universe there are also universal truths which differentiate pleasure and happiness. Pleasure is a temporary stimulation. It is a brightly wrapped package covered in tinsel and bows that contains nothing of worth, or worse, it’s filled with something that afterward leaves the recipient stained and whose stench lingers far after the box is gone. Pleasure is nearly always easy and immediate. It most often requires little forethought or planning
Our minds are unique. Unlike pencil lines on paper or binary ones and zeros everything seen or heard or spoken is forever imprinted there. Thoughts, feeling and images spontaneously reappear from years ago, decades ago, good or bad, sweet or bitter.
If you stand aside and look at most of the world as they struggle for some day to day meaning it’s tragically comical how so many blindly move from one new sensation to another. How they blindly trade needs for wants with virtually no thought for the consequences of their actions. And then they question the emptiness, the aftertaste of their impulses.
How does one distinguish happiness from pleasure?
Certainly, as children, we learn from the examples that surround us as we grow. Yet within ever child is a sense or right and wrong. When faced with moral dilemmas we all have that voice within us which would steer us toward a solution which would make us greater than we were. Unfortunately most of us lack the fortitude to act upon the higher impulses we have. Often those impulses fly in the face of pleasure for they whisper of restraint, of discipline, of forgoing this moments pleasure for tomorrows greater happiness. There is a great book entitled The Road Less Traveled by a shrink named Scott Peck. He makes the comment that everything we desire is possible if we are willing to pay the necessary price to achieve it. Most of us are simply too short-sighted, too impatient, and once we have begun to fill our lives with the consequences of our myopia we attempt to justify ourselves and the fruit we have begun to reap.
Yet inside each of us dwells that eternal soul that knows the truth about who we are. Every time our impatience or foolishness drives it farther from being a tool we use in making choices we reinforce a darkness that becomes ever more difficult to see through. I guess the junkies of the world know what it means to finally give away their agency entirely. The world is full of addictions, habits that come to control us instead of being controlled.
We all have a wide variety of strengths and weaknesses. To wallow in our weaknesses, to fail to rise to our strengths defies the immortal potential inherent in us. An immortal, omnipotent being was actually the father of my soul. An infinitely patient and loving being was the mother of my soul, and yours.
In truly understanding that, there is a great peace. Darkness cannot dwell in the presence of light.
 What is happiness? What is love? I think happiness never leaves a bitter aftertaste or any regret. Happiness is forever relived with the original sweetness and passion. Have you ever been so happy that you cried? I have, a few times.
I truly have enjoyed this adventure of daring to undress our fantasies and discover some of the reality of us, some of the beauty.
I assume that has mostly come to an end. We have replaced the perfect unknown with the bittersweet of truth. We so dearly hope that each soul we touch might at last provide that other half we all inherently feel we lack. And as it is so often the case with hearts, one knows before the other that the inquiry is concluded, enough of the what-ifs were answered that the search resumes. I’m sorry you were disappointed.
Thank you.
I will still very much enjoy seeing your smile as long as that blessing is mine to experience. It’s what you do best…