Pleasure kills. Only its possibility excites. Man has sought pleasure with such fury, through his myopic eyes that finally this pursuit has been reduced to the ‘quest’ of it rather than achieving it. Pleasure remains a mirage, an elusive dream, a tantalizing prospect, causing many a soul, backsliding into the uncharted, often nightmarish territories of madness, dejection and despair. He has rummaged through relationships, wealth, possessions, fame and fortune to at least have a glimpse of it, to clutch it with such frenzy, when an inner voice in his soul points to two- way warning signs at the crossroads of his mind, “you will never find freedom from pleasure” and “perfect happiness is not found here”. But man is reluctant to accept the truth that contradicts his hearts desires. With unprecedented vigor he re-embarks on his mission to find liberation in pleasure and this futile exercise is best described in a poem by Stephen Crane, titled ‘I Saw a Man Pursuing the Horizon’. Its ageless verses resound with astonishing clarity the plight of human vanity and conceit.
“I saw a man pursuing the horizon;
Round and round they sped.
I was disturbed at this;
I accosted the man.
“It is futile,” I said,
“You can never....”
“You lie,” he cried,
And ran on.
Every time man delved into the exotic experiences of pleasure, his mind could conceive something novel and better. There begins a new search, yearning for a new experience and followed by limited fulfillment, fresh disillusionment leading to a spiral of disappointments and his restless, hopeless mind craving for a new adventure. Lying on his back in the secluded alley of his existence, he becomes a cynic. He concludes that life is a snare and a delusion and with a vengeance becomes a bohemian in conformance to Epicurean ideals of “Eat, live and be merry. There may not be a tomorrow”. A subtle deception prompts cumulative indulgences in vices from venial to mortal, from profligate to debauchery until he deviates so far away from the epicenter of virtue and righteousness, progressively and imperceptibly. He slowly and inevitably succumbs to wretched habits that torments him unceasingly but all the more self-justifying such retrogressions as the only solution to compensate for the existential vacuum he laments about life’s apparent injustice. He becomes circumscribed in negativities and pessimism, blaming all from friends, families, society and God. He degenerates into a conviction of being accursed. Cyclical helplessness sets in…
Man has a soul apart from the body which, is corroborated by bible verses in 1 Thessalonians 5:23, “Now may the God of peace sanctify you completely; may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. He perceives something enduring in his interactions with his soul, like the feeling of good in an act of charity or the nobility in preserving a good conscience or the happiness he derives from listening to a mellifluous composition or the religious experience of the sacrosanct during prayer which fills him and binds him with such JOY. A joy that neither withers away nor cause fatigue in his mind. Instinctively, a beacon of light pierces through the blackness of his darkened mind, shimmering with the immortal pearls of wisdom proclaiming that if he is obsessed with pursuit of pleasure, he will sorely miss the joys of life.
Every earthly pleasure is lost once attained, because of the gross mismatch between desires and realizations, from the ideal fantasized compared to actual possession; the more material the ideal, greater the disappointment, the more spiritual the ideal, greater the enlightenment. Matter never offers lasting happiness. Fulton Sheen, the erudite and much-loved archbishop mentions about humanity’s craving for a Perfect Life, Perfect Love and Perfect Truth that transcends time and space. It is logical to assume that human beings probably wouldn’t harbor such predispositions unless they existed, in an alternate reality. Is that realm, theists, spiritualists, theologians and philosophers define as heaven? Lovers united by eyes than fate in a warm embrace, the enigmatic smile of an infant, that twinkle of gratitude in a beggar’s eyes on receiving a food packet, helping a senile woman cross a street, touching the feet of parents, the nostalgia of childhood memories and in all these similar, sublime joys of life, we feel that time elapsed like eternity. The mercurial philosopher of antiquity, Aristotle elucidates such a state as Catharsis, tantamount to a “melting mood” where one experiences the divine, intellectually and emotionally purged that fills the innermost recesses of souls with a sublime joy, beyond the confines of words.
Perhaps happiness has to do with the eternal. We crave for happiness that is timeless. But we seek it extrinsic of ourselves, in matter, in the flesh, in sensual cravings, and this deceptive pleasure tempting us for better experiences. It never offers the freedom, we passionately and desperately seek! Mankind, from time immemorial and since the dawn of civilization, lamented that life is nothing but sporadic bursts of happiness. His joy is only an interruption in the immensity of sorrows and unfulfilled desires, an oasis in the ruthless desert of misery and suffering, trials and tribulations, offering just a fleeting solace, barely enough to wet the parched lips of life. It is as transient as the break of a wave and humans invariably return to the matrix of human drama...hope!
But we were made for perfect happiness to be in communion with perfect love by aligning ourselves with perfect truth…to experience its divine foretaste on Earth and unless we turn our self to the source of it, which is God, our hearts will never be at rest. Man has been so enchanted with the gifts that the Great Giver, The Jehovah Jireh supplies us with that we have ascribed a false security to the gifts rather than the giver. We have conditioned ourselves to believe by “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and pride of life” that gifts are sufficient for us. We have forgotten the Giver, regressed from true understanding into a credulous thinking that gifts are the source of our enduring joy. Happiness is only the by-product and not the goal; it flows from a source. Identifying the source is the root of wisdom. And that central connection between the SOURCE and HAPPINESS is important to seize.
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