I just couldn’t help thinking about pleasure & happiness after watching Dorian Gray. Even when I read the book, I couldn’t ignore making a comparison between the 2. In another short story ‘The Happy Prince,’ Oscar Wilde has touched the same thing.
Pleasure is quite different from happiness. The 1st question is: what is pleasure? Now pleasure could be different things for different people. It’s not just sex. You can have pleasure while shopping. You can have pleasure while taking drugs. You can have pleasure when you go beyond the boundaries. You can have pleasure doing crazy experiments on yourself. Yeah I think when it comes to pleasure, there is no limit. To my mind, pleasure is fun; pleasure is not happiness. You can acquire pleasure by doing really negative stuff. You can also acquire pleasure by working on a good cause. So if pleasure is happiness, then most of us ought to be happy humans. But are we?
The character of Dorian Gray has tasted everything in life. He knew all kinds of pleasure…a point came when he was tired. We must bear in mind that it was this character which uttered that pleasure is a different thing from happiness. That character not just knew what was pleasure, he even defined pleasure for himself that wasn’t known to others, as others were, for the most part, scared to grab what they truly desired. But nevertheless he knew that pleasure was a momentary thing.
Genuine happiness is something different. However, it’s ironic that even genuine happiness doesn’t last forever. Anyhow as I have been able to understand pleasure is more of fun .You may have enjoyed, you may have lived in the moment, but that’s about it. And I think we shouldn’t confuse pleasure with happiness.
If you ever have been genuinely happy in your life, you would know that pleasure can’t be momentary happiness, it’s pure fun…many a time, more fun than happiness.
Anyhow, I haven’t said it’s the final word or the gospel, so stay chill!
