I strive for happiness. There is more to life than happiness, dammit!
If everyone spent life sedated on beds with tubes that supported all of the body’s functions, loaded with drugs that blocked any emotion but total, utter bliss, everyone would have happiness. But I think that most people, if given the choice, would decide not to be hooked up to such an apparatus.
It’s about LOVE. Yes, or no?
People think that’s cheezy, romantic, or unrealistic. But when you realize you do not crave hapiness alone; if someone told you that you could be completely happy but only by being the last person on Earth, you realize you would not accept that. Life is about striving for love and suffering to love. It’s about expressing love and giving love.
There are moments when my whole body is full of pleasure. I’ve been looking up at the stars or gazing out over a city from a high place and have been overwhelmed with a sense of appreciation and beauty. But there is always a pang of sadness that I’m not sharing it with someone I love. It’s the difference between union and masturbation.
Love is my state of grace. When I do not love, I do not have grace. Love is my home, my anchor. Who will I find that in? One person? A group of friends? A family? A community? The world?
I need all of those, wrapped around me in layers. The innermost and outermost layers are God. They are all God.
Love is what human beings do for each other. How do you help someone suffer through a disease? You show that person love. How do you help someone cope with a loss? You show that person love. How do you celebrate a person’s accomplishments? You show that person love. How do you help a person accept mortality? You show that person love. Love is the greatest and only thing a human being can do for another.
How do you love? You make yourself as emotionally present with that person as you can. You share time, energy, resources, and experience; you make sacrifices knowing that it isn’t a true sacrifice because you gain so much when your gifts are accepted and appreciated.
Who am I to say all this? I’m so weak in love. I get angry when I don’t get love back, I get bitter, and my rutheless mind starts churning, plotting ways I can make people love me or ways I can comfort myself thinking those who don’t love me are actually miserable. I have to slap myself out of it and sometimes I know I should slap myself and I don’t; I just let those selfish feelings sink in.
But it’s what I beleive. Life is about love. Take my love or don’t take it. Somewhere in the world is someone who will.
On One Hand 
I feel ya, really. I haven’t been lucky in love either and though I haven’t given up on it just yet, I’ve stopped looking for it. There are days when I’m so lonely I could just stay in bed and wish the world to hell, but I’ve learned to surround myself with people who do love me for me.
Love shouldn’t hurt so much, but sometimes it does. I think, for me though, when that right one comes along it won’t be hard, it won’t be painful, and it’ll be everything I’ve wanted and more. Of course, I might be 65 by then, but I’m willing to wait for it because like you, I won’t settle for second best.
*hug*
Comment by jennafern — June 10, 2006 @ 4:49 am |
It would be nice if I agree with you. Life is about experience. Love, while I suppose it’s a wonderful thing (having only felt it from family and friends and never the romantic experience) does not exist for a great many people. I do not believe I shall ever experience this sort of love.
Comment by mroctober — June 10, 2006 @ 10:14 am |
loveitloveitloveit!
Comment by la__masquerade — June 10, 2006 @ 11:03 pm |
if someone told you that you could be completely happy but only by being the last person on Earth, you realize you would not accept that.
Supposing the person is correct, your failure to accept could only be because you either (a) do not want complete happiness or (b) do not understand the offer; it cannot be because the proposed state of affairs would fail to provide you with complete happiness.
This is similar to people wondering whether or not they would get bored in heaven. If a state of affairs is defined in such a way that it includes your complete happiness (as, e.g., heaven often is), then there is no question as to whether you would be completely happy in said state of affairs–it is true by definition. The real reason we are likely to reject the offer given above is because we think its claim (i.e., that one can, in actual fact, be completely happy in such a scenario) is unlikely to be true. But that doesn’t tap us into anything mystical; we just some have evidence to suggest the claim is false.
This is quite different, of course, from your body-in-a-vat example, where it is questionable that that would fall under any interesting definition of “happiness”.
Comment by lackingquality — June 13, 2006 @ 9:14 am |