Meaning V Happiness

Read a blog yesterday that inspired me to get a book called the Interpretation of murder, the first couple of paragraphs read like this

"There is no mystery to happiness.
Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays. The happy man does not look back. He doesn't look ahead. He lives in the present.

But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them"

So if we must only choose between them, which should we choose?

There is a strong argument for happiness, the idea that we should live only in the present, but it's also a life without "WHY" and although I've never figured out why why is so important, I still have a feeling it is, there must be a purpose however simple, maybe that purpose is just to be happy, which makes a neat circular argument but brings me no satisfaction as to meaning.

There must be more to life than happiness...... it's the most lovely feeling, to be happy, but surely it's not possible to attain it as a constant state.

Mosre questions than answers again I'm afraid... I'll just read the book and see what happens.