That's right. You read the title correctly. Stop it. Now.

A cold beer on a hot summer's day makes any man happy. Or a good meal. Or a good video game. Or sex with a beautiful woman. But all these things are fleeting moments, subjective, and relative to that moment in time. A cold beer is horrible in mid-winter. A good meal useless when you're full. A video game is meaningless if you have no time to play, and woman unenjoyable if she's vapid, heartless cold fish.

Let's take an extreme example: a basement-dwelling, forever alone, neckbeared weeaboo. He sits in his mother's basement watching animu, playing viddya and jerking off until the day of his death (brain aneurism at 40). He lives his life from one distraction to the next. Episode to game to porn. Each makes him happy. But would he be happy looking back on his life on his deathbed?

Or a more extreme example: a junkie. Living from fix to fix. His entire life revolving around the next. Would he be happy?

Or you? If you live you life from one distraction to the next. Party to party. Weekend to weekend.

So what is happiness? Is happiness the sum of moments of happiness? Like most things, this has already been answered by the ancient Greeks. (Seriously, if you have a philosophical question, check with Plato first.) There are two kinds of happiness (the word is poorly defined in English). The momentary, subjective kind; like a cold beer on a hot summer's day. Which is fleeting and relative. This kind of happiness is the most often referenced and might better be called "pleasures".

Then there is the long-term kind, which Plato called virtue. Not necessary a life of good deeds but a life of value. Perhaps better called "satisfaction". A man with an empire, a man of achievement, experience, and personal development will certainly be more happy on his deathbed. But this is the long-sum game that can only be tallied at the end, and for most that is too long.

Achievement is of course relative to every man but perhaps it means building an empire, literally. Or a business empire. Or leaving a legacy in the community. Or leaving one in science. Or familial legacy.

So I ask you: which man do you wish to be on your deathbed? The man with achievement? Or the average man? One of the masses.

Stop chasing happiness, pleasures, and distractions like everybody else in the world. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and most go to their graves with their song still in them. Become great. Or at least try.

And ironically, at the end of the day, when you're awesome the things everybody else wastes their lives chasing will come to you.