Happiness and Life-Avoidance

The stoics and epicureans differ in their philosophies on happiness, but both result in some sort of life-avoidance. Let's start with the epichureans. They think that happiness will come from finding pleasure in the moment you are in, while trying to avoid physical and/or mental pain. Epicureans seek pleasure that releases the body from pain. This however can hinder you from experiencing many things in life. If you are so focused on finding the pleasure in your life, you could easily miss things in life that are important, even if they are not pleasurable. Also, hard work can also come with pain, but the end result is often pleasurable, but an epicurean would never know this because they avoid pain. For example, a gymnast is constantly working out and practicing and often can get seriously injured, but when they win a competition, all the pain and stress ends up being worth the happy ending. However, an epicurean would never know this pleasurable ending because they would never want the original pain of working out and practicing.

Now lets look at the stoics point of view. Stoics believe that they will find the ultimate happiness in their after-life causing them to live a passive lifestyle. If the happiness comes in the afterlife, then why try to find it in your human life? This is another way of life-avoidance because if you're just being passive all through life while you wait for the ultimate happiness in the after life, you'll be missing out on all the amazing things life has to offer. For example, if you sit on your couch watching TV for your entire life just waiting for the happiness in the after life, then you'll never be able to experience the amazing parts of life like ice cream, sledding and friends. This is obviously not a very exciting and rich lifestyle.

It seems that both stoics and epicureans have flaws in their roads to happiness and both plans can be seen as some form of life-avoidance. I see the epicurean view as being extremely unrealistic because pain can be found anywhere and everyone will experience pain at some point in their life, so why try so hard to avoid it? Sometimes pain can even be a good thing. Some of the best breakthroughs come after a breakdown. I also see the stoic view as being unrealistic because living a passive life rarely leads to a happy and exciting life. I understand that the stoics feel the ultimate happiness will come in the after life, but why not have fun during your human life before you enter your after life instead of sitting around and being passive? In the end, I feel that both the stoics and epicureans have lifestyles that are somewhat life-avoiding and I, personally, would not want to be restricted to either philosophy.