I had an interesting conversation about goals and desire frustration with my friend. This sounds like a really serious conversation but in actuality we were simply trying to create an objective understanding of why people act how they act and we approached it as though trying to solve a puzzle. We basically arrived at the conclusion that all happiness arises from the satisfaction of the ego and that satisfaction of the ego can take two forms: self-beneficence (some form of hedonism) and other-directed-beneficence (some form of altruism). Happiness, we concluded, arises from the satisfaction of the will in these two realms and finding the right balance between the two alternatives. However, after hanging up the phone I couldn’t help but think that we were missing something. Of all the other alternatives we considered - frustrated desire, misplaced desire, failure, despair – I forgot to appreciate how these struggles and letdowns create the possibility of satisfaction, the possibility of happiness. If we don’t understand what it is to fail then how can we understand what it is to overcome that failure? If we don’t understand what it is to be sad, then how can we understand what it is to surmount that sadness? Therefore, sadness, pain, suffering, all seem necessary for satisfaction to even exist as a concept and our view of happiness as mere satisfaction of the ego seems insufficient.

I also had diarrhea today.

Tags: Happiness, Satisfaction, Desire, Suffering, Ego