Human beings, as sentient beings, are naturally drawn towards experiences that generate pleasure, and to the various emotions pleasure can lead to – satisfaction, contentment, happiness, joy, excitement, ecstasy, thrill, or bliss. Those pleasurable experiences we seek can be very simple, or more complex and layered (for instance, a mix of pain and strain preceding a proudly delightful outcome), but they all play an important part in our intrinsic understanding of “well-being” as well as in the more scholarly definition of what constitutes “a good life”.
There are some clear physiological reasons for that. Levels of dopamine, serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin – hormones affiliated with pleasurable activities in various ways – also set the tone for the body’s capacity to respond effectively to a stressful environment, for its ability to re-establish “balance” when the context is suddenly off-balance, and for the individual’s capacity to recognize, engage with, and nurture secure attachment with others, which in turn supports community resilience and greater social cohesion.
On a psychological level, the uncertainty and the many unknowns of Life trigger enough existential angst to make us desire more happiness and joy as time passes. Amplified by culture, this desire becomes an expectation that life well lived encompasses many – mostly? – happy or thrilling moments, and by extension, unhappy or painful moments are dreaded as something to avoid. It does not take long to stretch this expectation into a moral judgement, whereby to feel sadness, unhappiness, pain, or ill-being implies a failure of sorts – failing to do enough to be happy, to satisfy one’s needs, to revel in pleasure. This moral judgement is of course heavily biased and flawed, but it is prevalent in many aspects of modern society, including in the problematic assumption that the aim of psychotherapeutic work is to “fix” unhappiness (e.g. depressive state, anxious thoughts, hectic mood swings) so as to return the individual to a life of pleasure and excitement – or, more likely, to a busy quest for pleasure.
What we probably need to learn, both individually and collectively, is that pleasure and joy are precious because they are ephemeral, and that a perpetual quest for constant pleasure or happiness likely takes us further away from a much-needed wisdom. To want to hold on to what we enjoy is a risky attitude: it speaks of a controlling pattern, a lack of trust in Life, or of an inflated ego stance, or of a deep-seated fear of loss or fear of lacking. All of these are very human reactions and emotions, but they also fuel complexes and leave us “stuck” in unhealthy situations, rather than direct conscious energy towards understanding, acceptance and growth. In contrast, accepting that what I experience right now, delightful as it may be, is ephemeral evokes an attitude of humility – a recognition that Life is not something I can dictate or control, but something I participate in, for better or worse but always in a flow, always in movement. Thus, as happy as I may be, this shall pass. And as unhappy as I may be, this also shall pass. Pleasure I may experience, but this shall end. Pain I may experience, but this shall end as well. I do not control when or in what way I will move from one state to the next – despite my ego’s forceful yet futile attempts at doing so, causing me a lot of stress and suffering along the way. What I can do, however, is cultivate my conscious awareness of my participation in this flow – i.e. to accept with humility that I do have agency but that there is a greater design, a greater intelligence that works with, but also can limit, my agency.
This humble attitude is, paradoxically, the best pathway towards developing the capacity to experience fully joyful moments without anxious attachment. It brings us back to the here-and-now, to where our agency can be enacted the most – that is, to the choice of being fully present to the joy that is unfolding in this moment, for as long as it will be gifted to us, without taking on the burden to have to maintain it steadily while the world around us constantly changes. This, of course, does not imply we cannot contribute to, elicit or cultivate moments of joy and delight, or even hope for happiness in our days and years to come. Rather, it suggests that our capacity to be truly, fully joyful when those moments come is heightened by an attitude of humility. Humility, in this sense, simply means that we allow ourselves to be in awe of Life, of that something greater than us which is the mystery and the meaning of a life well lived.