Pleasure vs. Happiness

For a long time, I've been getting the two mixed up.

I thought that pleasure amounted to happiness. It doesn't.

Pleasure (parties, drugs, boys) are all very well and good if you are happy. If you are a happy person, these things only enhance it. However, if you are unhappy, unsettled, unsure of everything than these things DO NOT solve anything. In fact, they make it worse. You wind up thinking "If I can't be happy with all this then what will it take, what's wrong with me?" Simple things never cross your mind, or at least, they never crossed mine.

Now I know that the true key to happiness is Love. Whether that be love of a person, love of a God or even love for something such as writing or playing music. All of these things are real food for the soul, not food for the senses, and so they make the happiness true.

I'm not going to lie, I was one of the people that used to seek out pleasure to try and fill the empty void inside me. All I can say is that now, finally, I've seen sense and it's thanks to three things:

1) A book, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian Gray abandoned everything in the pursuit of pleasure. He tried drugs, violence, prostitutes...all the things that people typically think of as "bad" but fun. Anyway in the end, although his experiences hadn't affected his physical body, they affected his soul and turned him into a monster, purely because he was using them to try and create artificial happiness instead of looking for something deeper.

2) A blog. A girl I don't know very well posted a blog, kind of along the same lines as this one, about 'pleasurable things' not really being a long-term fix. She found God and while I'm still unsure about the whole idea of God and religion, there's no disputing that it helped her when it seemed as if nothing would. So even if God didn't actually exist, surely the pure, unquestioning faith in Him would still be enough?

3)When someone knows you inside out, your flaws, weaknesses, how you're going to react to things...when you put complete trust in that person never abandoning you, always being there. When that person cares about you just as much as you care about them, when you can be the real you around them and bring down the wall that you put up as a barrier against the rest of the world, when all of that happens, you can find true happiness. Letting go and giving yourself to a person like that is the hardest and possibly the stupidest thing a person can do, but if you don't take a risk you're never going to reap the benefits.

I don't know if this makes sense, all I know is that I'm seeing things clearer now. It's as if I'm not empty inside anymore.

And no, I'm not saying that drugs or parties or anything are bad, they're only bad if you're at rock bottom and you're seeking them as help rather than love and stability.