Can someone PLEASE interpret this quote for me????

Question

this is the quote: "An individual's search for happiness can have tragic consequences."

Answer 1

Happiness is not always what's good for you.

Example. You meet a new guy- he's single, nice, good looking perfect in every way but he lives far and you have to leave a great job and a good apartment to go and live with him. After you've been there for a bit you find out he's a drunk, and is cheating on you.

In your quest for happiness, you left everything you knew and everything that was good for you, just to be dissapointed in the end. Tragic consequences.

Answer 2

It's a warning. We all have our ideas of what we think would make us happy.. more money, fame, etc. However, we aren't always right with our assumptions. Some people get so focused on being happy and feeling good that they turn to drugs and alcohol to help them. Obviously, this is more harm than good. We all know that, but people do it anyway because they desperately want to feel good.  

Basically, happiness isn't something that should be chased. Instead you should let it come to you. Otherwise, you could end up a lot worse off than where you started.

Like Nathaniel Hawthorne once said:"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

Answer 3

This quote is in line with the quote by St Teresa d'Avila who said "we suffer more for our answered prayers than our unanswered ones."

Sometimes in one's search for happiness one can find oneself in a destructive rather than a constructive situation.

Example:

Fall in love with a wife beater.

Move to a big city and get mugged and wind up crippled or shot dead.

Travel to some exotic land and contract a deadly disease in the course of your trip.

Answer 4

if you abandon everything and everyone else to look for what will make you happy, you will probably end up unhappy.

a little cynical, don't you think? aren't we supposed to 'follow our dreams'?