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@Eggs in a Bottle
But if they were really as unhappy as they pretend, says my antagonist, why do they remain in life?...
Not satisfied with life, afraid of death.
This is the secret chain, say I, that holds us. We are terrified, not bribed to the continuance of our existence.
It is only a false delicacy, he may insist, which a few refined spirits indulge, and which has spread these complaints among the whole race of mankind. . . . And what is this delicacy, I ask, which you blame? Is it any thing but a greater sensibility to all the pleasures and pains of life? and if the man of a delicate, refined temper, by being so much more alive than the rest of the world, is only so much more unhappy, what judgement must we form in general of human life?
Let men remain at rest, says our adversary, and they will be easy. They are willing artificers of their own misery. . . . No! reply I: an anxious languor follows their repose; disappointment, vexation, trouble, their activity and ambition.
Ask yourself, ask any of your acquaintance, whether they would live over again the last ten or twenty years of their life. No! but the next twenty, they say, will be better:
And from the dregs of life, hope to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
Thus at last they find (such is the greatness of human misery, it reconciles even contradictions), that they complain at once of the shortness of life, and of its vanity and sorrow.
Perhaps she is the wiser.
There is nothing to say that how she views life is incorrect. Life is not something that can be translated into anything concrete. There are no facts and figures that will prove whether or not her views are flawed. Without doubt they must have thought this through for a very long time.
You missed Anh_Minh's point on oblivion. It's not an argument for belief in the afterlife. But regardless, if there is an afterlife then she will gain a new existence, and if it is just oblivion then she has gained an eternity without either pain or pleasure. If it is the former, then maybe she will find happiness, and if it is the latter then even though she will never again experience mortal happiness, she will also never experience mortal pain. Unless you have proof backed by an omnipotent being who is able to perceive beyond the limits of human experience, I don't see how she is wrong and you are right.
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