“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”

The pursuit of happiness is, I dare say, an ambition not entirely adrift the predominantly felicitous inhabitants of Buttonwood Bay. I confess shadowing the vocation myself. Lest this be misinterpreted as a purely hedonistic sense of purpose, permit me to opine that it is instead a pragmatic enterprise devoted to making the best of an ephemeral opportunity. Indeed it is the evanescent character of life which oddly inspires its gusto though very often the zeal is more apparent among the elderly than the young. This is as it should be since during youth there is so much more poetic to preoccupy oneself than the fugacious nature of life. But the hour soon approaches us all in our turn!

Accommodating the vanishing character of subsistence is for some a stimulus so evocative as to nurture Elysian contemplation. As lately as this morning for example I engaged in a confab with DD regarding the purported passage to god. I am however quick to take notice that the discussion preceded what to me is the more pivotal examination of the existence of god. This preliminary quite apart from the Christian assertion that “there is one and only one god and there shall be no other gods before me”. In any event I am disposed to abandon the utility of such debate because it has been proven again and again that where both parties on either side of the resolution are convinced of their respective legitimacy there is seldom room for convincing compromise.  Certainly nothing as inconsequential as logic or reason would hold sway with any credibility in these matters!

Denominating myself a voluptuary is not something I would ungrudgingly do. My history of development in prep school, undergraduate, law school and the practice of law was hardly that of a student of Epicurus. Studying and working into the early hours of the morning was not uncommon; similarly on weekends. In a word I was preoccupied by my commitments and obligations.  The punctuations of sybaritic immoderation were infrequent and transitory. Unquestionably the expansion of sensual preoccupation has evolved with age; and I now unrepentantly acknowledge my absorption in the selfish mission perhaps as the result of my contemporaneous desertion of a belief in an after-life. I will however say by way of indemnity that it has done nothing to moderate my fervour for improvement of the common good by my actions (not so much by my words which I have found to be less substantial and meaningful). I can at least agree with the religious fanatics that practicing what one preaches is both paramount and preferable notwithstanding it hasn’t the seduction of biblical verbiage.

The arguments for and against the ingredients of almost any religious belief or disbelief are by now so hackneyed that they hardly bear repetition. Earlier this morning as I was reading the article sent me by DD I could not help but think I had heard it all before. The very structure of the sentences was similar; the lexical sets synonymous. It had as distinct and predictable a character as baroque or renaissance music. Like a good joke, the difference is often not what is said but the delivery. The variances on both sides constitute an insurmountable obstruction, the base of which keeps moving with every push against it, in the end succeeding only to distance the thesis from the contrary opinion. By contrast the improving nature of the exchange of views is the ability of the contestants to rise above their individual postulation and conclude not with bravado and clenched fists but rather with the contentment of the game well played. Differences of opinion are after all the eternal commodity of human relationships.  Less characteristic is the submission to equivocation in the interest of temporizing. I won’t pretend to imagine that either side of such an elemental argument is apt to concede for any purpose whatever; but the possibility of quelling the heat is within the realm of fancy. Indeed I can say without hesitation that I far more admire a disputant of any record who is prepared to lay down the gauntlet in the interest of greater though unspecified advantage. Let’s face it, not everything is black and white!