This is the last in a small series on joys and pleasures, one of the more heartwarming kirist subjects.
Is it either ethical or plausible to live for pleasure? Probably not. That last slice of pizza might please us but if we’re dieting we need to skip it. Sleeping with our neighbor might excite us but it would also betray our marriage. Our ethics come first.
Yes, we want pleasure. But it isn’t plausible to raise it to the exalted place of life purpose. In fact, we may have to upgrade our personality to guarantee that we don’t chase pleasure—and, as a result of that upgrade, we might experience more pleasure!
When you upgrade your personality, you provide yourself with more opportunities for pleasure. Say that you’re consumed by ambition. If so, won’t it prove devilishly hard to experience helping another person or walking in nature as a pleasure?
But, say that you’ve managed to modulate that ambitiousness. Then lending a helping hand might bring you joy. A nature walk might warm your heart. You would no longer race past possible pleasures and no longer stand immune to everyday pleasures.
Joy, pleasure, satisfaction, happiness, elation, ecstasy: what important words! A kirist tries to make sense of each of these, feeling through their differences and arriving at a sense of what is available, what is desirable, and where to set the bar.
Take the word “ecstasy.” We’ve likely experienced pleasure, joy and happiness. But what about ecstasy? We have the word but have we had the experience? Is ecstasy perhaps a word better suited to the world of wishful thinking?
A kirist is a little skeptical of states that seem to require powerful drugs or visits from gods. If ecstasy is fantasy or the fruit of a chemical, it must surely be a different thing from pleasure, joy, and happiness. Can there be kirist ecstasy?
Well, let us allow for it! Forget about trance dancing, magic mushrooms, or tantric sex. What if the very act of living a kirist life created ecstatic experiences? Let us leave that possibility wide open, either for us or for future generations.
And what about the word “happiness”? Happiness is such a difficult word! It connotes something steady and long-lasting, as in “a happy life.” But we also speak about moments of happiness. Is happiness more like a particle or more like a wave?
We know that we can have moments of happiness, just as we can have moments of joy or pleasure. We can even have days of happiness, maybe even weeks of happiness. But does the idea of “a happy life” put us at odds with our intentions?
Kirists opt for absurd rebellion. We assert our individuality. We are adamant about living our life purposes, no matter how much work they make. We know to do the next right thing and the right thing after that. Can all this and happiness coexist?
Maybe. But what we know is that we mustn’t chase happiness. Our self-obligation is to do what we need to do in order to live a life that makes us proud. If we are then also gifted with happiness, that must be the very pinnacle of human existence.
Imagine that lucky combination, living a full, rich kirist life and also experiencing happiness. Indeed, you might even make that one of your kirist practices, to envision a rich, intentional kirist life that is also a happy life. That is worth picturing!
We possess a family of words that include pleasure, joy, and happiness. We embrace this much-to-be-desired family but we do not live for it. Rather, we see these experiences as fortuitous punctuation marks in a life organized around our life purposes.
More joy, then! More pleasure. More happiness. Maybe even some ecstasy. Let’s angle for them, coax them, and stand open to them. But first let us live proudly, doing the next right thing and aligning our life with our wisest intentions.
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Eric Maisel is the author of 50+ books. You can learn more about him at www.ericmaisel.com, subscribe to all of his blog posts at https://authory.com/ericmaisel, learn more about kirism here, and write him at [email protected]
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