Guilty Pleasures

Where your pleasure is,
there is your treasure;
Where your treasure is,
there is your heart;
Where your heart is,
there is your happiness.
- Saint Augustine

Why do we feel guilty about feeling good? Why do we save the things that give us pleasure for special occasions?

It's a paradox - we feel guilty about feeling good because we feel like we are taking away from someone else. But we feel guilty about feeling bad, because, as we tell ourselves, someone else always has it worse.

Aren't we all in the "pursuit of happiness?" Isn't that what so many feel is the meaning of life - to just be happy? Why then do we talk ourselves into feeling bad about it when we finally get there?

Most philosophers agree that happiness and pleasure are byproducts of the things we do. As they say, it's the journey, not the destination. Even Aristotle talked about our pursuit of pleasure, noting that as humans, we are incapable of continuous pleasure because we are incapable of continuous activity - and pleasure is what comes with the activity.

In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl put it this way:

"Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the byproduct of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

John Stuart Mill, the utilitarian philosopher, said:

"But I now thought that this end [one's happiness] was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness[....] Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness along the way[....] Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so."

I'm not sure how I feel about all of this. I continue to seek things that give me pleasure, wanting and hoping to be "happy." To think of pleasure as a byproduct seems to lessen it somehow to me. But I do agree - at least for me, happiness is found in the happiness of others. And most often, we find happiness when we are not looking for it.

I like to think of our emotional "stuff" (our "baggage") like a backpack we always have with us. We are taught that, to be happy, we are to take that backpack, dump it out (to a friend, or a therapist, or a family member, or a random stranger in line at the grocery store) and then leave it where we dumped it. But that doesn't work. Why? Because we have memories. There are too many things we can't leave behind.

I like to visualize working through my emotional stuff in this way - I take my backpack, dump it out, and try to sort through the things I need or don't need for the rest of the journey. There are some things I can leave behind forever. There are some things I'll hold on to, "just in case." There are some things that I know I'll need. And there are some things I am just not ready to let go of.

The best I can do sometimes is to toss a few things to lighten my load, and the rest I put back in my pack in a more organized way. It helps to sort through things, because it makes it easier for us to find the things we need when we need them.

A lot of the things in our backpacks are things we need - they are the things we've learned that keep us safe, that help us navigate the trail, that shelter us and nourish us and comfort us. When we go through difficult situations, we carry the tools from that experience in our backpacks. Sometimes we also carry things we won't always need, like the feelings of hurt, which we'll let go of if and when we're ready.

After losing my son, I experienced an early miscarriage a few months later. It was a setback, for sure, bringing back the memories of losing my son, of my body's failure, of the guilt at having such a hard time carrying a pregnancy. But when I talked about that experience, I talked about tools. I compared it to digging a big hole. When I lost Eroll, I had to dig the hole by hand. Every day, digging a hole with just my fingers and fingernails. It was hard, painful work. But through it, I learned to make my own tools. When I had the miscarriage, I still had to dig a hole, and it was still hard, painful work. But now I had a shovel. It didn't mean I didn't have to dig the hole, I still had to do the work. But now I had tools.

I like to think that many of the things in our backpacks are just that - tools that we've learned to create along the way. For many of them, we just never know when we might need them.

So, do we have tools in our backpacks that give us pleasure? (cue gutter-thoughts here) Do we carry things with us that make us happy?

Pleasure is thought to be an individual experience - what gives me pleasure may not be the same for you. Pleasure can be found in pretty much any physical, sensual, emotional, or mental experience, at least by someone. I find pleasure in music, writing, food, sex, relationships. Some people find pleasure in exercise, public recognition, drugs.

I don't want to get into the meaning of life or what makes us happy. I guess what I wonder is, why do we feel guilty when we feel pleasure? Pleasure is part of the human experience, we are hard-wired for it, and every one of our senses is capable of experiencing pleasure as well as pain.

My theory is that we feel guilty because we feel by receiving pleasure, we are taking it away from someone else. I wonder what it is about our culture that makes us feel that way. Why do we feel ashamed about feeling good? As long as your pleasure does not cause someone else to hurt, why not do it?

I don't like the term "guilty pleasures" - if something gives you pleasure, embrace it. If you aren't hurting someone else, don't feel guilty about it. There is so much about the universe that gives us pleasure. I think denying that, closing our eyes to the experiences that make us feel good, is where we should feel guilty.



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