“If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more.”
Moby Dick
I am sitting here with Explosions in the Sky; embarked in an extraordinary enterprise. Just like any other day. It is so simple, so pleasing, and yet distressing. Even worse, it is so distressing because it is so pleasing and so easily such. My eyes are open and so is my skin. The light is proper and the air is clean. It is warm in here. I am so tranquil, so relaxed. Yet, I worry, for how long is this going to last?
I fight. I want to keep close. I want to stay put. To feel each and every one of its degrees. This fleeting pleasure. Elusive happiness. I grapple. The head goes up and down. Left. Right. Arms up and left. There is nothing left for the legs. Where is it? What is it? I need to find it before I loose it. It fades. Now I fight myself for such a nonsensical search. Who would be stupid enough to look for what he has already got? Like any other day, happiness goes.
So it seems that pleasure is derived from change. That we cannot just seat and stare. And happiness appears to be a delayed inertia that ever more slowly comes to an end, as things calm down, as there is no change. For happiness is tranquility before it begets boredom. And boredom calls for change, movement, stress.
So happiness demands misery, comfort discomfort, movement no change. Of course! What else could it be?
