girldetective

I have recently run into someone who has told me the following two thoughts:

>>The simple fact that my object is not happiness...It's not that I scorn happiness -- I don't. I look forward to it, welcome it, cherish it, and revel in it when it comes. But it isn't my goal, nor my measure of success.<<

>>Later, thinking about what we'd been saying, I said that I thought the true source of that inability to be casual about relationships, at a very deep level, was that I view life as struggle. I accept that; I even welcome it.<<

Perhaps I'm naive, but I don't think I have ever run into someone who feels fundamentally that happiness is not their goal, and I don't know what to make of it. I understand appreciating the struggle, but what is the goal if not happiness of some sort for either self or some other being? Could it be detachment, a benign acceptance of all, a lack of engagement? I don't think I have ever run into a true martyr.