Happy In Moderation

What if the thing that made you the most happy in life was the one thing that caused you the most pain? Everyone goes through this almost every day in their life, I am certain of it. All my friends, including myself, are currently trying to find the equilibrium between the extraordinary pleasure and the intense repercussions of the same object.

If you are still at a loss for what I am trying to say, let me put it this way. A man loves chocolate cake. The texture of the frosting on his tongue, the taste of it in his mouth, the sight of the chocolate piled layer upon layer.... When he looks back, his happiest memories are those that involve the succulent presence of the dark dessert. Nothing else seems to matter as long as there is cake. He forgets about all the other downfalls in his life, feels the best about himself, and is the happiest in the presence of the the baked chocolate. Nonetheless, he realizes that it is also his weakness. The cake causes him to gain weight and after the taste is gone, he no longer feels good about himself. His friends make fun of him for his weird passion about a baked good and his overall health declines due to the ever increasing blood pressure.

Of course, this is just an over-reaching metaphor about a lust for a dessert, but suppose that his total happiness rested on the existance of cake in his life. Is it worth being happy when you are required to be miserable at the same time? Where should we draw the line when the ease of pain comes at the expense of joy?

I had a conversation with my friend today. She is in love with her best friend. He is in love with his ex. But she told me that she is willing to be his friend if that is what it takes to be even a little piece of his life. Her love is disguised as friendship and she has to endure hearing his stories of other women and how much he loves someone else, etc. etc. And I look up to her because she is willing to go through all that heartache just be able to be in his life.

Maybe the purpose of life is not only to find what makes you happy, but to find that threshold of where you can no longer hold onto it. At what point does "for better and for worse" no longer matter? Is there a limit when "worse" is just too bad, the pain exceeding the pleasure; and if this were to happen, does this mean that we should give up what truly makes us happy because the current moment is bleak? Where should we draw the line between good and evil?

Is being happy in moderation not good enough?