What do you really want in life? Do you want happiness that’s long-lasting or do you want momentary pleasure?
The answer is simple of course: Both right ☺️
Let’s talk about the sources of each – pleasure and happiness.
You get pleasure when endorphins are rushing through your brain and giving you that momentary feel of satisfaction. That type of satisfaction occurs when you just won a race, ate a piece of delicious cake, won the Lotto, had great sex, or a bunch of equivalent things which give you a feeling of satisfaction in the moment.
The challenge with most of us is that we confuse these spikes of pleasure with happiness.
Figure: The way I think about Pleasure vs Happiness
So what’s true happiness and how do you attain that?
Happiness is harder to come by, requires more investment of time and energy and patience. Happiness also sometimes comes with momentary pain as you try to achieve that state of happiness.
Because of all these obstacles, many of us don’t even bother trying to work at it. It’s just too hard. And many times it’s not even guaranteed that you’ll achieve happiness at all that work. While pleasure, even though it’s momentary, it’s guaranteed.
So that begs the question… Is the pursuit of happiness worth it?
Why not just have many spikes of pleasure along your life which is definitely much easier to attain rather than pursuing happiness which is harder and not always guaranteed?
That’s a very good question indeed.
Let’s look closely at the problem with pleasure.
Pleasure is temporary of course but the bigger problem is that once that sense of pleasure is gone, it drops you right back to the state where you started. Sometimes even lower because of the expectation you had that it was going to last. And when it doesn’t last that long and the euphoria fades away, you have that feeling of dissatisfaction which stays with you longer.
Happiness on the other hand is incremental and sometimes exponential depending on how much you invest in it. Happiness builds on top of the previous state you were in.
But once again, the challenge with happiness: it takes work and intention. And that’s the reason that most people opt for quick pleasure instead of pursuits of long-term happiness.
I personally think there’s room for both. Sometimes you just want a quick hit of pleasure and that’s okay. As long as we don’t get addicted to those spikes of pleasure.
I truly believe that if we want our lives to be worth it long term, we should incrementally be investing in our happiness. And sometimes that investment requires payment in the form of sacrifice of momentary pleasure.