Journey into happiness
Happiness is a dual power of "digestion." To be happy is to be able to easily drink and be drunk, to take and be taken; to tremble in unison for the duration of a fusion where two worlds come together, then to enjoy the wonderful fact that two inner selves can regenerate and metamorphose reciprocally after saying "goodbye" to each other when one returns to oneself filled with the energy of the other, and that this energy passes into our being through dreams... We will further study the alchemical reactions born from a shared tremble.
We will enter the matrix of happiness. P128
And what about philosophy?
Waltz of hesitation, once again. One step of criticism, one step of poetry; we oscillate between horror and wonder. On one hand, you criticize happinessism, this "negative happiness that the consumer society sells us: the contentment of having what others do not have." On the other hand, you have an organic-oneiric idea of happiness, a digestive dream absorbing the mix of emotions and events that saturate us: "The otherness of others is the lifeblood of our happiness." Quite a Manichaean distinction, my friend! Happiness to vomit/happiness to eat, depressing happiness/invigorating happiness, fake happiness/true happiness. It's grreuh!... grrreuh!...» p32
The uniqueness of Happiness
In the satire of the Dutch novelist Herman Koch's high society, "The Dinner," Paul exposes a characteristic of happiness: "Happiness is self-sufficient; it needs no witnesses." Not that a truly happy person owes their happiness only to themselves; they simply do not seek to show or speak about their happiness. Even if they radiate, they do not feel the need to flaunt it and to expect others to validate this intimate state. The self-sufficiency of happiness would therefore be visual and narrative ("it needs no witnesses"). Moreover, it is possible that the happiest people are not even aware of their luck and are surprised to evoke jealousy in their surroundings. Page 45
by Vincent Cespedes Larousse, March 2010