I really like this quote. My initial reaction to this was that it was referencing the . Since you’ve seen this in context you are saying that it is more than that. Happiness is more like chasing the first “high” something that you considered as “this is what ‘insert abstract emotion’ must feel like”. After thinking this through, I would submit that happiness is one memory, security is another, and so on. I like the quote.

I don’t think that happiness is a memory; I think it’s more analogous to food or sleep. Just as our bodies have needs which we instinctively seek to fulfill, I think that we have emotional, cognitive, and spiritual needs which we are driven to attempt to fulfill just like we are driven to sleep and eat. Just as people who have never experienced being well-nourished still try extremely hard for food, so people who have not experienced happiness or only experienced small portions of happiness violently try to achieve more than they have had. I think that our word “happiness” stands for a collection of things that are emotional needs in people, most of which are inarticulate and very few of which people have experienced in fullness. After all, happiness is not a static entity; you can have small amounts of it, or have it in degrees of purity (mixed or unmixed with other emotions or states of self-perception). It makes sense that, just as our bodies have certain requirements for survival that are ingrained at birth, this pattern would hold true for other aspects of our being as well.

Plus, if happiness is a need whose fulfillment is continually possible, that’s a lot better than a memory, which relies on a specific set of circumstances and may not be able to be replicated. I think that someone who is happy has a mixture of good things flowing steadily into their life and flowing steadily from them; things like love and affection from other people, the autonomy to choose one’s own responses, freedom from shame, freedom from bitterness about griefs they’ve suffered, and enjoyable work to do that matches well with their abilities and interests. These are dynamic things that have to do with relationship, things that are continually created and maintained.

@mollyjo Thanks for the Theory of Forms link! As I was reading this passage I kept thinking there was some greek philosophy along similar lines. I had forgotten exactly what it was but I’m pretty sure Augustine was at the very least mindful of it. BTW if you had ever formally learned HTML I would be pretty disappointed with your teachers! They have better things to do than teach a markup language