Choose Enjoyment Over Pleasure

Enjoyment is better than pleasure because it is more conscious and permanent.

Everyone gets pleasure from eating when they’re hungry, but it takes some knowledge and cultivation to enjoy food. After you finish lunch, the pleasure is gone, and in fact, the idea of eating is no longer appealing because your physical need has been satisfied. Meanwhile, the memory of a meal enjoyed with friends transcends the immediate experience and can bring good feelings long after it is over.

Opting for pleasure is a mistake for happiness. But even if we choose enjoyment, other barriers can make us less likely to get the satisfaction that it can offer. Some people ruin their enjoyment of life by using it to show others how happy they are.

Enjoyment can also be ruined by a worldview that is excessively practical, in which we feel our time and energy should never be “wasted.” This is particularly true in the case of leisure, which is often viewed as a misuse of time, because it is not productive in an economic sense. Such an attitude lowers your enjoyment of leisure.

Enjoyment of life—whether that means spending “unproductive” time with others, reading a good book, or taking a long walk—has a loftier significance than good feelings do. It is important for human agency, a life lived on purpose.

Enjoyment means refusing to be managed by pleasures, nor subjugated by joyless drudgery. Pursuing it is a declaration of independence from your base impulses, be they licentious or despotic. It is a key ingredient in creating the life you truly want.