Happiness and the ability to feel pleasure have always been important to me because, from a young age, I experienced mild forms of depression called dysthymia and anhedonia, which later became much worse. People with dysthymia generally experience little or no joy in their lives, while anhedonia is defined as the inability to gain pleasure from enjoyable experiences.
From my own personal experience, I learned that depression damages the lives of the people who suffer from it, and also many of the people who come into contact with those suffering from depression. The ability to feel pleasure and enjoyment of sensual existence are essential to human well-being. Not only that, but we have come to understand that matter and energy are two sides of the same coin, inseparable, which means that matter and spirit are also inseparable. In other words, we can access spirit through our connection to matter.
I have heard it said that the reason humans have caused so much havoc on the natural environment is not because we are so materialistic, but because we actually lack a deep appreciation and love for the material world. If we could truly connect to the earth and the materials derived from the earth, we would feel deeply nourished and satiated.
As it is, people don't really feel pleasure or joy from sensual experiences. That is why they are so hungry, greedy, and insatiable for more and more, and they always seem to need something bigger, better, and newer all the time. They are never satisfied with what exists in their lives at the moment.
I don't mean to imply that this is a failure of personal or social morality. In fact, I'm stating just the opposite. It is the puritanitical sense of morality that has disconnected us from our ability to feel sensual pleasure and therefore our ability to connect with what is truly divine.
This is a difficult concept to explain because the idea that we should enjoy sensual pleasure has always been associated with pure hedonism and excess. So, am I suggesting that hedonism and excess are the way to happiness, contentment, joy, and bliss?
Absolutely not. Again, I am stating just the opposite. Hedonism, excess, greed, insatiability, and addiction are the symptoms of an inability to truly feel sensual pleasure and to feel a deep connection to the material world.
In ancient times, people naturally thought in terms of a trinity. There were two opposing extremes and then the middle or balanced way. To strive for excellence and virtue meant to strive for moderation and balance, not one extreme or the other. But during the dark ages, people were taught to think, feel, and behave as if there were only two polarities: good and evil.
In other words, you could be good or evil; not something in between. People were taught that spirit was good, while the material world and anything earthly, such as the body, were evil.
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I just came across this blog and was struck immediately that it is how I feel a good share of the time: joyless. I have also found that the general suggested ways of fighting this, including drugs, do not work either. We need a new direction is our search for joy. I would suggest the misinterpreted founder of happiness studies, Epicurus. Although we today use the term epicurean delights as sensual pleasures, that is not at all what he had in mind.
He said: "When we say that pleasure is the chief good we are not speaking of the pleasures of the debauched man, or those that lie in sensual enjoyment. Rather we mean the freedom of the body from pain, and of the soul from disturbance. For it is not continued drinkings and revels, or the enjoyment of female society, or feasts of fish or other expensive foods, that make life pleasant, but such sober contemplation as examines the reasons for choice and avoidance, and puts to flight the vain opinions from which arises most of the confusion that troubles the soul."
Wisdom is the only liberator, he continues: it frees us from bondage to the passions, from fear of the gods, and from dread of death; it teaches us how to bear misfortune, and how to derive a deep and lasting pleasure from the simple goods of life and the quiet pleasures of the mind. The wise person does not burn with ambition or lust for fame; he does not envy the good fortune of his enemies, nor even of his friends; he avoids the fevered competition of the city and the turmoil of political strife; he seeks the calm of the countryside, and finds the surest and deepest happiness in tranquility of body and mind.
We should all inscribe above our doors what he had over the entrance to his school, "Guest, Thou shalt be happy here; for here happiness is esteemed the highest good."
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