for my friend

Last week, my friend asked me about the difference between happiness and meaning. I was stuck in a stupor state trying to come up with an answer (I tend to figure out something smart to say when asked a question, but I would normally end up with something confusing) and in the end, all I could say to my friend was "happiness is happiness and meaning is meaning" (see!).

Anyway, I'm currently reading a book by Jed Rubenfeld called The Interpretation of Murder. The book starts off with this..

"There is no mystery to happiness.

Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisitng only that we choose between them."

For myself, I had always chosen meaning. I want to try happiness now. :)

p/s I had the best-day yesterday. Thank you everyone for the wishes. :) And thank you.