Happiness or pleasure

Before I go into my usual waffle or just general chit chat, let’s see what the Cambridge dictionary says about the 2

Pleasure: noun – Enjoyment, happiness, or satisfaction, or something that gives this

Happiness: noun – The feeling of being happy

I don’t know about you but in my opinion (like an arsehole, everyone has one), the 2 can easily be misconstrued. One could easily follow the other or be interpreted as the other. Is there however a deeper feeling attached to Happiness? Is pleasure a more short term feeling? Having sex for example. It’s a feeling of pleasure, albeit a quick one for some of you.

But having sex (pleasure) with the man / woman you deeply love, that makes you happy, is that the happiness part? Maybe I’m looking at it too simplistically.

For a while I was mistaking pleasure for happiness. The job. The salary. The women. The car. The Status it commanded. The instant gratification that I’d receive from all of these but never really getting that deep feeling of happiness. Always looking for the next quick fix of pleasure. Fortunately, this didn’t take over my life, I still had some form of awareness that this is not really deep happiness.

Whilst having that sense of awareness though, it’s still so easy to chase that feeling of pleasure when we live in lack or a feeling or loss. We can find other things to paper over the cracks of hurt, loss, just general holes within our life. There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as we’re aware and don’t allow it to take over out existence.

Social media / pleasure. Is social media or social pleasure a reason we chase that pleasure? Are we trying to show others or keep up with the masses of showing happiness in the form of pleasure? Possibly. I’ve certainly been there and probably not qualified to give a more academic answer but for me it goes back to believing pleasure is actually happiness when in fact, happiness is just a by product of many many smaller, finer things, integrated within our lives.

Pleasure by the way is by no means a bad thing. Go get it. Chase it. Make it happen. Celebrate it. I certainly love that feeling of pleasure.

To conclude, if happiness is the ultimate goal, are we short changing ourselves by not taking into account the smaller things we do in life that actually gives us pure happiness? I know for a fact when I see my nieces and we’re laughing and playing, this gives me pure happiness which is priceless. When I purchased my BMW, it was a feeling of pleasure (enjoyment), that wasn’t happiness for me though.

I thought I was searching for happiness, but in reality, happiness is within me, it’s all around me, it’s within my kindness and acts of kindness but more importantly, the love I share

As ever, thanks for reading

Rishi Tyns