Many intelligent people equate happiness with fun. The truth is that fun and happiness have little or nothing in common. Fun is what we experience during the act. Happiness is what we experience after an act. It is deeper, more abiding emotion.
Going to an amusement park of ball game, watching a movie or television, are fun activities that help us relax, temporarily forget our problems and maybe even laugh. But they do not bring happiness, because their positive effects end when the fun ends.
The way people cling to the belief that a fun-filled, pain free life equals happiness actually decreases their chances of ever attaining real happiness. If fun and pleasure are equated with happiness, then pain must be equated with unhappiness. But in fact, the opposite is true: more times than not, things that lead to happiness involve some pain.
As a result, many people avoid the very endeavors that are the source of true happiness. They fear the pain inevitably brought by such things as marriage, raising children, professional achievement, religious commitment, charitable work, self-improvement.
Ask a bachelor why he resists marriage even though he finds dating to be less and less satisfying. If he’s honest, he will tell you that he is afraid of making a commitment. For a commitment is in fact quite painful. The single life is filled with fun, adventure and excitement. Marriage has such movement, but they are not its most distinguishing features.
Similarly, couples who choose not to have children are deciding in favor of painless fun over painful happiness. They can dine out whenever they want, travel wherever they want and sleep as late as they want. Couples with infant children are lucky to get a whole night’s sleep or a three-day vacation. I don’t know any parents would choose the word fun to describe raising children.
But couples who decide not to have children never experience the pleasure of hugging them or tucking them into bed at night. They never know the joy of watching a child grow up or of playing with a grandchild. Difficult endeavors — writing, raising children, trying to do good in the world — will bring us more happiness than can ever be found in fun, that least permanent of things.
The moment we understand that fun does not bring happiness, we began to lead our lives differently. The effect can be, quite literally, life-transforming.
【小题1】In the last sentence of the first paragraph, the word “It” refers to ______.| A．fun | B．happiness | C．act | D．truth |
| A．playing cards | B．playing football | C．dancing | D．helping the poor |
| A．Couples who have children own true happiness. |
| B．There are some similarities between fun and happiness |
| C．Couples who don’t want to have children own true happiness |
| D．Men who like to live a single life are the most happy ones of the world. |
| A．Utopian | B．ever-lasting | C．temporary | D．complicated |
| A．The ways to get happiness | B．The secret of true happiness |
| C．Fun and its effects | D．The happiness of raising children. |
