What to do? (reprise)

As I begin to contemplate the type of trajectory to take through my life, I am always confronted with what at first seems to be a superficial consideration. I am currently wrestling with whether or not to use money as a point of departure for my decisions. Alas, after some thinking and consideration, it occurs to be that there is a fundamental difference between at least two ways of looking at it. Do I want to be happy, or do I rather wish to be satisfied? Without an easily intelligible framework for tackling happiness, the types of justifications I wrestle with often bounce back into the realm of satisfaction or monetary compensation. I cannot even define what it is that might be considered the object of my happiness – indeed, staking my happiness upon an object seems to me the foremost incorrect way to go about it.

The problem revolves much around my personality. I am utterly astonished at the breadth of possible vocations, hobbies, acts, sports, and so on that have contributed something I could only refer to as hedonistic happiness. In some ways I have certainly felt a deeper happiness, but unfortunately, there is no common denominator among those rare occurrences. Perhaps I should look to a specific example, say, one of leadership. There have been experiences in my life where the success of my leadership has registered incredible highs. I cannot quantify (dare I use so brusque a word?) the relationship of such an experience to either my own selfish fulfillment or some altruistic good. In fact, I only roughly discern that there is a loophole through which my capacity to be selfish might have slipped. I would call upon altruism as justification, but it appears fuzzy. Therefore, at this point I might simply count such an experience against myself.

I am certainly deep within some manner of ethical debate. Before I can adequately root through the breadth I spoke of earlier, I must convince myself that I see it rightly. In other words, to pick and choose the right vocation requires that my criteria for selection are not themselves questionable. And thus, the distinction among perhaps the foremost of those criteria of satisfaction and happiness is of paramount importance.

So what are the terms of this debate?