The Eternal Quest for Pleasure

I start each new week with a blog post. Every post is an indication of my current state of mind. Things in Malaysia are going back to normal after our rather strict lockdown but Malaysians seem to support it and we seemed to have done a good job driving down the number of infections.

I haven't been eating out for a while and don't intend to do so in the foreseeable future. New habits have been formed with the so-called new normal. The hassle of taking temperatures and writing down contact info at every shop is a big turn-off. There's enough work and recreation at home to keep me occupied. And there's also that constant goal of mine to further simplify my life. The pandemic has probably helped this process.

Living in isolation has never been too much of a problem for me, even though I do enjoy the company of friends. When I was living alone in a motel in the US for months, I did not for a single instance felt lonely. I guess being an avid reader helps. There's no time to be lonely when you have an unlimited amount of books waiting to be devoured.

Books and other types of content are infinite nowadays. The challenge is how to be selective about it, because time is a precious resource. Like eating, sight-seeing, socializing and sex, reading is just another of life's many pleasures. That's what everyone tries to do anyway: enjoying life.

We are pleasure-seeking creatures. We assume that a happy life is one filled with pleasures. It is usually true, until we find that things that used to give us pleasure might turn out to be less than satisfactory after a while. How many times have you heard someone say that the food at a particular restaurant used to be better. Is that really true? Had the taste of the food deteriorated or was it simply because the pleasure had faded away due to familiarity?

Are there any pleasures in life that get better every time you experience it? Are sequels ever better than the original? We develop addictions simply because our body craves for the level of pleasure that we had experienced before. So we keep on repeating the experience and yet somehow not finding perfect satisfaction in it. And so we repeat it again and again ad infinitum. It's the Buddhist concept of dukkha (better translated as 'unsatisfactoriness') rearing its ugly head again.

A static pleasure by itself will ultimately be unsatisfactory, if it is not accompanied by transformation. Parents enjoy the pleasure of seeing their young children everyday not because they remain so cute forever, but it's because they keep growing. Change can bring new pleasures and happiness. It is by the process of transformation and renewal that we keep on finding new joy in life.

if an object of our affection does not evolve in a way that gives us continuous pleasure, we'll soon get bored with it. The pleasure of intoxicants can only be sustained by ramping up their dosage. But that only works to a certain extend because the body has a certain threshold of tolerance for it. At some point, it becomes a torture. So if we are pleasure-seekers, we have to find an object that transforms on its own, and enrich us in ever-growing ways.

That is the key to sustaining worldly happiness. You have to evolve together with your objects of pleasure. Pleasures come from growth and transformation. A relationship between a couple cannot remain forever in its youthful state of romantic passion, but instead it has to grow into new phases of maturity and mutual-discovery. That is why some creative hobbies give us pleasure: we are indulging in a skill or activity that can nourish us spiritually and mentally. We get to learn something every time we perform it. If we have a similar attitude towards life, nothing will ever bore us.

I did not know what I'd be writing about at the beginning of this post. But as I am ending this piece, I have found that I have created something out of nothing--I have understood more about myself and elucidated my thoughts. My state of mind has evolved as I typed those paragraphs. And that somehow gives me a great sense of pleasure. Which is why I have continued doing so for the past 17 years.