What is Happiness?

     Can you be happy if you face reality? A question I have had ever since I started reading Candide. This novel seems to be contrasting happiness and hope with reality. Voltaire in my opinion must have been a very realistic or down to earth person. He probably makes fun of the people that live in a fantasy because he was not one of them. Pangloss and Candide are two examples of these types of people. They believe everything is perfect and that their lives couldn’t be better, but finally Candide is realizing life is everything but perfect. 

        Candide´s happiness relies on his true love Lady Cunegonde and life without her is almost not worth living. He faces obstacles in life but none of them is as painful as losing his dear love. Now that he does not have her, he finally faces reality with his eyes wide open and notices it’s not as pleasant as Dr. Pangloss always said. "What would professor Pangloss say if he had seen how unsophisticated nature behaves?... All is for the best, but I must say it is very cruel to have lost lady cunegonde and to be skewered by Oreillons." (71) Now that he is finally starting to face reality he notices that he isn’t very happy because his life is full of misfortunes and not having Lady Cunegonde by his side makes everything harder to bear.

         Nothing in Candide´s life turns out right, after something good happens all that he acquires is taken away from him in a blink of an eye. He seems to be chasing his happiness but he doesn’t really know the true meaning of it. He does not realize that the more you imagine what being happy feels like, the more you distort the real image. It’s like the quote in my blog “If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” -Anne Bradstreet. The more you wait and expect for something to be the way you wanted the least it will fit your expectations only bringing disappointment.

      Happiness is a very controversial word. It has a different connotation for every single person. For some happiness might depend on wealth, for others it might mean finding true love, for others it might even turn out to be DEATH. But for Candide happiness is love and love is what gives him hope and somehow gives him a reason to continue in his journey. The problem is when he faces the truth and realizes the probability that he will be back with Cunegonde is very small he starts seeing life differently. So is he still happy now that he has faced reality? What does happiness mean to you?