There is a constant battle between my monkey brain and my desire to be more Stoic. The one part of me wants to enjoy the simple pleasures in life while the Stoic in me tells me they’re unnecessary.
When can I take a warm shower instead of a cold one? When can I eat a piece of cake without feeling bad about it? Can I just turn my car’s AC on without worrying about wasting gas? Why can’t I enjoy simple pleasures like everyone else instead of dealing with some discomfort as a way to grow mentally stronger?
On the one hand, my mind says “Just enjoy life and all you have available to you! You only have this one life, so make it enjoyable.” While on the other hand my mind tells me these pleasures are bad, they make me weak, and they create a dependency.
After doing some reading, I don’t think the Stoics teach you to never experience pleasure, I think they warn you of wrongly pursuing it, growing dependent upon it, and letting it control you.
If you’re pursuing pleasure at the expense of family and friends, you should check yourself. If you’re unable to go a day, a week, or any period of time without the things in question, you need to change something. When your decisions start to revolve around something ephemeral, reflection is necessary.
The goal should be to become indifferent to these experiences and items. If life gives us the opportunity to travel, we can feel the joy of the experience. But, when the trip is over and we go back to work, we cannot be upset and counting the minutes until our next trip.
If we want to go out for a few drinks with friends, we don’t have to punish ourselves for having a good time. But, if we find ourselves needing to drink more and more frequently, we need to take a step back.
It’s not about completely shutting out pleasure and never experiencing joy. Life is about finding the things that make us happy, but never becoming dependent on them, because in the end, everything can be taken away from us. We need to be able to live without it in order to understand how wonderful it is to live with it.
August 1, 2022
