by Kai Deniri

Created on: April 30, 2008

Pleasure and happiness differ because pleasure's momentary and happiness is more sustained, more pervasive, or both. A thoroughly miserable or addicted person can find pleasure in a glass of scotch, but not happiness. Once the scotch is gone, it's only a matter of time before the pleasure turns back into moping. By comparison, someone happy can get the same exact pleasure in a glass of scotch. Once the scotch is gone in his case, however, it's only a matter of time before the pleasure subsides to living habits accepted. Furthermore, pleasure is more likely involuntary and natural, whereas happiness is more often built out of good choices or washed over us in the wake of good luck. Can you help feeling pleasure when a football team you're obsessed with comes back to win after a 30-point deficit? Can you be discouraged with life while your favorite food is hot and smelling good on a plate in front of you? Pleasure, involuntary as it may be, can also be inappropriate, like when you want to sing Alleluia cuz your annoying roommate is gone for a week, and suddenly remember she's having emergency surgery. You're not happy someone's sick, you're just feeling pleasure of having a place to yourself without someone leaving sticky notes about the way you're supposed to leave the handtowel folded.

In this way, sometimes one can oppose the other. Like, right now I have the free will, the money, the craving, and the access to go over to the Kiosk and eat six sumptuous double-caramel Magnum chocolate-covered ice cream Popsicles. Did I mention it's Swiss chocolate covering the creamiest ice cream ever? There are two thick, hard, meltaway frozen shells of this deluxe chocolate, an outer one and an inner one, that have to melt in your mouth before you can reach the ice cream, and in between the chocolate shells is probably a half a pint of the sweetest caramel I've ever tasted. That would be the pleasure of a lifetime. Or if I decide not to, I could instead fit into my bathing suit, eat healthy, and not feel like a mope tomorrow from the sleep I lost to sugar shock. I think I'll forgo that unbelievable pleasure because it'd interfere with my happiness. For some reason, looking nice in my swimsuit and eating right and not being tired are things that make me consider myself happy, and lacking them makes me sad or uncomfortable. I think it's because the ice cream bars don't have reality in them the same way looking good in my swimsuit does. The thought of them makes me want them,

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