Self-transformation for Transcendence and Enjoyment

Photo: Jacek Stankiewicz, Kraków, Poland. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards 2023.

So, here you are. How’d that happen? Did a little bird send you? A Philosophy of Enjoyment? You’re kidding, right? Sounds like an excuse to misbehave (think salacious and audacious), but then, maybe you are depressed or anxious or flummoxed by existence or know someone who is, so you did a Google search looking for answers and stumbled upon a Philosophy of Enjoyment.

What? It happens.

Maybe, if you are receptive to what is presented by a relative far, far removed (meaning, yours truly, there’s no ChatGPT here), you’ll take it to heart, learn from it, laugh a bit and change your philosophy of life completely.

What? It happens.

Think about it: With 1.13 billion websites on the internet in 2023—82% of which are inactive—(source: Forbes Advisor), finding this site is like being hit by lightning.

And we all know how fun that is.

A short film. Do you have time to enjoy?

A Philosophy of Enjoyment addresses one problem: How does a person—like you and yours truly, for example, a person with a particular vantage point, with feelings, abilities, limitations and opinions; a person with an economic standing, living in multiple cultures, framed in a body, identifying with a gender or agender—how does such a person transcend, as in, go beyond or rise above a localized low-to-the-ground subjective perspective that’s possibly defective, addictive, depressive, sad, mad, or morose, so as to enjoy being alive and thinking to experience beauty, tranquility, sublimity and jocularity daily?

Moreover, how can a person transcend habituated thinking and what does transcendence have to do with enjoying a good life in a world rife with bedbugs? How does a person subjected to the unwelcome and unpleasant vicissitudes of life learn to see the world as beautiful and enjoyable with gratitude, without needing alcohol, edibles or anything? Is that even possible?

Of course it is. Transformation happens every day at sunrise. A new day, a new you. You decide who you’ll be and what you’ll do.

Cue music (to set the mood for transcendence and transformation):

Ancient Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Epicurus and Epictetus emphasized eudaimonia. That’s an old word without a modern equivalent. Maybe that’s because eudaimonia encourages virtues like prudence and moderation, both of which may be considered old-fashioned bummers.

Eudaimonia is a Greek word commonly translated as happiness or welfare but it literally means the state or condition of good spirit, as in, eu = good and daimonia = spirit.

But the word spirit causes people to think of ghosts and disembodied astral projections when what we’re really talking about is a feeling.

Epicurus (341-270 BCE) set up a school in his garden to study what makes people happy. After years of study he found that happiness requires tranquility, freedom from fear, absence of pain, friendship and connection.

Incidentally, the word paradise comes from a Persian word which means Walled Garden. “The notion of Paradise as a garden predates Islam, Judaism, Christianity and even the Garden of Eden. It stems from the Sumerian period 4000BC in Mesopotamia. Shade and water are two important elements of paradise” (The Beauty and Paradise of Gardens).

The stony eyes of Epicurus.

“Epicurus advocated living in such a way as to derive the greatest amount of pleasure possible during one’s lifetime, yet doing so moderately in order to avoid the suffering incurred by overindulgence in such pleasure” (Wikipedia).

It’s unfortunate, however, that pleasure is viewed with suspicion because it’s the excuse used for bad behaviour by the likes of sexual predators, traffickers and rude scoff-laws in loud cars who are all about their personal pleasure at the expense of others.

Epicurus wrote, “It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life” (Classical Wisdom).

When a pleasure takes hold, however, if one isn’t careful, one may want more and more. Those who are addicted to a pleasure may no longer be willing participants. Sometimes we all think it would be nice if things were different. We might wish our self to be different. Those without religious affiliation might even wish there was more to life than a scientific explanation.

The philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) said that God is nature, and, as you may have heard, psychological studies show, “People who are more connected with nature are happier, feel more vital, and have more meaning in their lives” (see: “How Modern Life Became Disconnected From Nature“, The Greater Good Magazine).

Philosopher Jonathan Rée (born 1948) said that Spinoza advised us to, “look with an attitude of love and reverence on the natural world as a whole and perhaps even yourself as a part of it… insofar as we’re irrational we’re divided, insofar as we’re rational we are united… freedom is not a matter of getting what you like. Freedom is learning to like what is rational to like” (Spinoza’s Ethics).

Happiness is in our nature (Springer Link). We just might not see it. We probably did as kids, but maybe not anymore (see also: Breathe in the air (and enjoy)). Happiness is available no matter who you are or what the situation. It takes a way of thinking that’s optimistic and a heart that is open without needing surgery.

Unless you are very young, you’ve probably realized that by living, time passes, and what’s happening now will become a mental movie which may or may not have occurred as remembered. The band OK Go put it this way: “… You know you can’t keep lettin’ it get you down, And you can’t keep draggin’ that dead weight around. If there ain’t all that much to lug around, Better run like hell when you hit the ground… When the morning comes” (“This Too Shall Pass”, 2010).

This is the end. Look at all angles and both ways too! March on. Think rational and love the world you’re in to make it even better (see also: Knowledge, Wisdom, Insight and Enjoyment).

Enjoy it. It’s for you.

Looking at trees

Most people don’t spend much time looking at trees. It’s not exactly an exciting activity. Computer screens are more entertaining. Trees don’t normally go anywhere or do anything. They sway sometimes. Depending on the wind.

“The world is changing: I feel it in the water, I feel it in the earth, and I smell it in the air.” – Treebeard (Tolkien).

Most people don’t put looking at trees on their bucket list. Then again, maybe they should.

In the film “Being 97” (2020), Herbert Finagrette (1921-2018), philosopher and writer of Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease (1988), described looking at trees as a, “transcendent experience.”

At 97 years of age Herbert found himself looking around at the world as if he’s been asleep and saying, “Death is a frightening thought.”

No doubt others would share this sentiment, but coming from Dr. Herbert Finagrette it is somewhat ironic given that in the book Death: Philosophical Sounding (1996) Herbert argued that “there is no reason to fear death.”

“What does it mean that I’m going to leave?”

Obviously, as he neared his life expectancy, things started to get real. Herbert changed his mind. “It (death) is something I don’t want to happen,” says Herbert. “Much as I think our life in this world is often a pretty messy affair, I still would like to hang around. I don’t know the basic reason why I should want to or the basic reason why I should be afraid of it.”

But then, ultimately, at 97 years of age, Herbert relaxed and found solace in trees.

“As I sit out now on my deck of the house, I look at the trees blowing in a little breeze and I’ve seen them innumerable times, but somehow, seeing the trees this time is a transcendent experience. I see how marvelous it is and I think to myself, ‘I’ve had these here all along. But have I really appreciated them‘?”

Probably not. But then, that’s probably true for most people who see trees without noticing them.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

Herbert’s experience with the trees puts one in mind of that song, “What a Wonderful World“, but if someone is uninspired by this wonderful world and afraid of death, aside from looking at trees, can philosophy help?

Of course it can. Let’s begin by stepping away from lugubrious talk. Let’s walk and run with Buster while avoiding boulders and, like a philosopher, let us sing, “Ooh La La” together.

Maybe we could be more Stoic about it? The stoicism of Marcus Aurelius is popular, even today (see: The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antonius). According to Stoic philosophy the path to happiness is found by accepting the moment as it is and by not allowing yourself to be controlled by desire or fear.

And, as we all know, pretty much everything we do relates to a desire to feel good, comfortable and pain-free, but like our philosophical friend under tree-shade said, long, long ago, “Life is Dukkha.” And what is Dukkha? Dukkha is a Pali word normally translated as meaning suffering, stress or unsatisfactoriness.

Sounds about right, don’t you think? “That’s life!” as they say. You can fulfil a desire but only temporarily because in this life suffering, whether physical, emotional or mental is pretty much unavoidable.

Source

As William de Witt Hyde (1858-1917) observed in The Five Great Philosophies of Life (1924), “gratifications are short; while appetites are long…. When a desire burns unsatisfied, the balance of our time is not pleasurable” (p. 52).

Perhaps, if thinking and acting Stoic isn’t your cup of tea (Stoics are sooo pessimistic, they always prepare for the worst!), what about Absurdism?

Sisyphus rocking it.

Absurdism is “the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe” (dictionary). Nobel prize winning Absurdist philosopher Albert Camus (1913-1960) said (or wrote), “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life!”

No doubt if Albert Camus were alive—he died at age 44 in a tragic car accident that may have been the handywork of Soviet spies, so the conspiracy goes (Britannica)—he would direct us to the myth of Sisyphus and the joy of struggle.

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy,” wrote Albert Camus who also said, “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion!”

Source: “Philosophy in Free Fall” Existential Comics

If Absurdism isn’t your thing, because it is, after all, absurd. Maybe you could be more Epicurean about it? Whereas Stoicism focuses on how to bear pain, Epicureanism focuses on how to gain pleasure, but it isn’t just about getting all the pleasure you can or of making pain not hurt, as De Witt Hyde said, “It is a question of the worth of the things in which we find our pleasure, and the relative values of the things we suffer for” (The Five Great Philosophies of Life, p. 111).

Let’s put it together one after another with succinct advice and a graphic to illustrate:

Stoic advice: As Epictetus said in Discourses, “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.” Message: Keep an open mind and heart. (There’s always more to it.)

Source: GoComics

Absurdist advice: Embrace the absurdity of life (e.g., don’t take it so serious) and find ways to navigate the world (e.g., humour) without succumbing to despair or nihilism.

Source: Savage Chickens by Doug Savage

Epicurean advice: “Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist” (Epicurus).

Source: Reality Check by Dave Whamond (2009)

So, dear philosopher, with thinking, coping and practice, we can be wise.

We can save the world, our own, by being rational.

We can make the most of life by always working to make it better.

We can enjoy a chaotic and yet, beautiful ride with all those ups and downs, if we always remember and follow this simple advice, namely:

Enjoy wisely.

A Way of Seeing To Enjoy (Part 1)

Knowing is equated with seeing. If you see the light, it could mean that you see a light blinking on a radio tower or it could mean that you know something that makes you see everything different or it could mean both.

Philosophy is equated with thinking. Religion is equated with feeling. Today, like the physicist David Bohm, “we hold several points of view, in a sort of active suspension” (Dialogue). Like poet William Blake—”To see a World in a Grain of Sand, And a Heaven in a Wild Flower“—and like philosophers Søren Kierkegaard—we see the ‘eternal in the temporal’—and Ludwig Wittgenstein we say, “how extraordinary that anything should exist” (Lecture on Ethics).

Bertrand Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein; from Logicomix (2008) by Apostolos Doxiadis, illustrated by Alecos Papadatos

Today we feel stoic acceptance of what the world throws at us. We say like Wittgenstein, “I am safe, nothing can injure me whatever happens” (Lecture on Ethics). With a “Click!” we connect to an awareness that leaves us feeling strangely lighthearted, for no apparent reason.

This feeling could best be described as “Self Actualization” as psychologist Abraham Maslow described, or as an “oceanic feeling” of limitlessness and oneness with the entire human race and universe as the mystic Romain Rolland described or it could be just one of those things: “What’s for supper?”

Today we go from a narrow self-centred perspective to a wider view of the world in its totality. We are ‘disturbed by joy’ like William Wordsworth was a few miles above Tintern Abbey:

“…I have felt a presence that disturbs me with joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of suns,
and the round ocean and the living air,
and the blue sky, and in the mind of man” (source)

1804. Tintern Abbey by William Havell (source).

Religious belief and the lack thereof could be understood not as rival theories but as different ways of seeing. If a believer and an atheist look at a picture and one says it’s hideous and the other says it’s lovely, who’s right? who’s wrong?

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Wittgenstein saw religion not as theoretical but as a “collection of pictures” reinforcing rules of life in the form of morality and a way of living that is itself what is eternal (Culture and Value, 1980). If someone taps into that eternal by living its ideal, one is living and being the eternal for a time like a leaf on a tree that is seasonal.

The world is factual. Facts are identifiable by science but facts can’t answer why you are here.

Like Wittgenstein said, “We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched” (Lecture on Ethics).

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte concluded in The Transcendence of the Ego that, “The World has not created the me: the me has not created the World” (p.105) but these two things are connected in a consciousness that is spontaneous. Sarte wrote, “Consciousness is always ‘of something‘, and therefore defined in relation to something else. It has no nature beyond this and is thus completely translucent” (source).

Some people picture a soul as translucent, as a kind of a ‘thing’—but not Wittgenstein. He said that if you look at soul language in religion, soul is not pictured as a thing but as integrity which is equally invisible. So if someone says, “He sold his soul for money” or “He sold his soul to the devil” it really means that he’s become materialistic. He has no deep moral sense and moral sense, as we know, is not visible.

A man may have everything but feel horribly afraid of what’s coming. A good man, however, enjoying a good way—tried, true and eternal through himself and those who live after—why, he has nothing to fear. Ever.

No matter what.

He can be light as a feather. He is not chained by anything material. He can never be judged as having lived a futile life even if he dies poor and unknown and didn’t do very much. After all, what does a sparrow do? What are flamingos for?

According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, a person can’t get to the highest level of “self-actualization” without making it by lower level needs such as food, sex and security.

To be self-actualized is to be unafraid of the unknown, untroubled by ambiguity and triviality, self-aware, accepting weaknesses while developing strengths, living a “meaningful life” by having a purpose that goes above and beyond one’s self to a greater good (see: Self Actual).

If you were asked, “Do you understand the difference between thinking and being?” what would you say?

Understanding the difference between thinking and being is like when police catch someone in the act of a crime and say, “What do you think you’re doing!” which is another way of saying, “How stupid are you?”

This is the exact moment when the cop and the criminal give their collective heads a shake. Most people (most of the time) see the world from inside a self-enclosed bubble of preoccupied thoughts that shape how the world is perceived. But this way of seeing is limiting because it sees a world perceived through language and opinion.

When a person with soul (and a clear conscience, if possible) wakes up, looks around and says full of happiness, “This is a miracle!” he isn’t just describing an event. It’s really his reaction to something significant that he is being, becoming and enjoying.

Priming, Framing, Transcending & Enjoying

There’s a battle going on. It happens in your brain. Do not be alarmed. It only affects every decision you’ve ever made and will ever make. It only affects your health, wealth and opinion and how you think and behave. No biggie.

The battle goes on beneath the surface of consciousness. That’s why you sometimes say, “Why did I do that? Did I say that? That wasn’t me.” Like everybody, you’re under a misconception. You think you know what influences you and how those influences affect you.

Freud (1915) described the conscious mind as the tip of the iceberg because a lot goes on beneath the surface (source). We can like or dislike something instantly without knowing why.

It goes like this (cue music: Ulf Söderberg “Tide” part 1).

First you have a feeling, then you make up something to explain that feeling. The explanation becomes a label. The label is declared true. It influences you. You become a self-fulfilling prophecy primed by what you do.

Think badly and badly you become.

You’re framed by spin.

In You Are Not So Smart (2011) David McRaney wrote, “You move through life forming opinions and cobbling together a story about who you are… taken as a whole it seems real” (p. xi).

But it isn’t.

It’s how you look at it. Out of the randomness of life you try to make sense and create meaning for yourself (McRaney, 2011). It’s what humans do. We interpret reality. We look at stars and see constellations. We see patterns in bullet holes on country signs.

With facial suggestions, we are “uniquely wired” to see faces in breakfast (source).

Jesus on toast.

We connect the dots of what goes on by combining expectations (what we think will happen) with mental models (how we think something works) and five senses (source: Myth or Science?).

See: “Act Naturally,” 1963

With confidence you see your history like a movie with characters, plots, themes and settings. You see yourself as a protagonist, but it’s a beautiful confabulation. The truth is: You make yourself up as you go. You’re a work in progress and like Buck Owens and a Buckaroo think, “All I gotta do is act naturally.” 

You are the tale you tell. It’s “The Story of Me!” as told by you. Memories are daydreams: part true, part fantasy, but you believe them completely.

Look at your surroundings. Set your mind “Open!” Realize that what matters most is to enjoy the significance of existence by loving the life you are given and giving the life you are living.

There’s nothing you must do. There’s no mountain you must climb. Success and failure don’t matter. Just contentment. Contentment is not death! Contentment is bliss! In dictionaries contentment and happiness are interchangeable.

It’s all in how you frame it. What’s your spin on things? How do you see yourself? Is life bliss-filled or disasterous? You decide. You choose. It’s simple really. Nothing to it. Live a pleasant life by living wisely, justly and well (Epicurus). And yet, living a pleasant life can be difficult when you’re with a species hell-bent on making the earth a landfill.

How is it that humans are such brilliant numbskulls (or is it boneheads)?

In 1982 when Alice Cooper (aka Vinnie Furnier) sang, “We’re all clones. All are one and one are all” (“Clones”) he anticipated a people without individuality singsonging, “No more problems on the way!” 

It’s not a new idea. People have always cloned around. In 1802 Willy Wordsworth put it this way:

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; –
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Why have humans declared war on nature? Is it because we construct reality and meaning within our minds? Is it because we have a bias towards confirming ourselves? Is it because we have a bias towards the present? What is it? The news is not good.

Is it any wonder so many want a new drug like Huey Lewis did?

Here we come to the crux of the matter. The trick to enjoying in the midst of humanity’s idiocy is in framing, priming and transcending.

Framing is a bias towards a given choice depending how it’s presented. It’s how the cover of a book influences your judgement. Framing moves you to react in certain ways based on how your brain makes comparisons between loss/gain, good/bad, half-full/half-empty. In framing you decide what’s important.

Framing is how you find patterns in chaos to survive and create meaning out of meaninglessness. The way you choose to frame things determines how you see.

See: Amelie frames and primes les petits plaisirs (the little pleasures).

Priming happens when subtle triggers influence your behavior without your awareness (Gladwell, 2006). Almost everything you perceive with your senses can blitz you with associations in your mind and cause you to act in certain ways without your awareness.

For example, if asked to name a fruit and you see the word “RED,” you’re more likely to think “apple” than “banana.” The word “RED” is priming the word “apple” into your brain.

Detail of  René Magritte’s “Son of Man” (1964).

René Magritte painted a self-portrait with his face behind a green apple and said, “Everything we see hides another thing. We always want to see what is hidden by what we see” (source). Maybe that’s why we don’t see what’s in front of us. We’re looking for something hidden.

Priming works best when not over thinking. You know you’re priming when time disappears. The trick is to let human bumbling cruelty prime you for transcendence by framing it differently. Frame it: They don’t know what they’re doing! They’re doing the best they can. Frame yourself freedom and then see beauty in a dump.

“Transcend” comes from Latin trans-, meaning “beyond,” and scandare, meaning “to climb” (source). It’s simple: to transcend is to climb beyond your usual physical needs and realities.

Prime yourself aware! Create meaning! Climb beyond ordinary feeling. Transcend transcendence by enjoying.

References:

Glandwell, M. (2006). Blink. Little Brown & Company.
McRaney, D. (2011). You Are Not So Smart. Gotham Books.

Attention & Imagination

On a cold winter’s night long ago an old man sits happy by a fire. He enjoys warming himself after a difficult day and realizes with surprise how fantastic he feels.

The wine, the food, the fire – it’s all better than good! It’s like he’s imagining it all. It’s so perfect! The cold world with its trees, its stars and its coyotes is as it should be and so is the old man who is seized by an almost intolerable happiness!

The old man has had his share of loss and despair, but none of that matters now in this moment of enjoyment. “What a mystery it is,” he thinks, “that it should be in our power to look or not look at what strikes us as horrible or alluring. Weak fool that I am, I can steer my own mind!”

As he pours wine for he and his friend, the old man realizes that the whole struggle he’s had has always been between himself and the pressure of his experience to enjoy or not enjoy life. That is the battle we all wage, but now he knows that there is no need for such a struggle to prevent him from enjoying life because he can enjoy the struggle itself!

“I will enjoy!” says the old man.

“Here! Here!” calls his friend. “Supper is almost ready!”

The old man feels giddy as he merges without moving. To move would be to break the spell of this still transcendence. He feels Rameau’s opera Les Indes Galantes inside and sings, “Peaceful forests. May a vain desire never trouble our hearts here…. Let us enjoy our refuges. Let us enjoy peaceful things! Ah! Can one be happy when you wish for other things?”

“No! Of course not!” calls his friend. “Just a second. I’ll get water.”

The old man who earlier saw without seeing now disappears in seeing! He no longer is in a room with a friend and a fire as a cold wind blows outside. He is the room! He is his friend! He is the fire! He is the cold wind that blows up to the stars! The old man has broken free! In this act of imagination he feels no separation.

Through happy attention to present enjoyment (knowing full-well he is only temporary), the old man has broken the boundary between his mental and physical self and everyone and everything else! In this togetherness he feels selfless beauty and ecstasy.

He’s awakened from a dream he didn’t know he was having. He thought he knew reality, but he didn’t. As he sips delicious and breathes in the scene, he thinks, “Sublime! Awe! Beauty! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” To whom he thanks, he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter. Words of gratitude pop out naturally.

Nothing hurts. Nothing disturbs. He smells the smoke and hears the stew simmer. He feels the weight of his beautiful hat on his head. He touches his shirt with gnarled fingers and feels nothing but love for all that is and was.

Even though the old man died hundreds of years ago in a pre-industrial age his experience isn’t one of a kind. Where there is beauty, nature, good food and drink, where there is a friend and love and warmth, there is enjoyment.

Some things never change.

Throughout history people have described the awe inspiring experience of breaking their individualized ego-bounds. It’s the basis of all good religion and poetry.

Poet John Keats (1795-1821) called it “the empathic entrance into essence.” He writes in Endymion (1818), “Wherein lies happiness? In that which becks, our ready minds to fellowship divine. A fellowship with essence; till we shine.”

What the old man felt long ago is the same source of enjoyment that anyone, anywhere, at anytime can feel. This is the eternal moment that’s always there.

Each of us perceives an outside world from within the bubble of ourselves. We see through “a glass darkly.” When happy, we see happy. When sad, we see sad. When self-absorbed, we don’t see at all. Terror is as much us as is love.

Without imagination and attention our senses are filtered through self-thought. Every “thing” is a “think.” Thought can distract us from the enjoyment of living in the same way that looking down texting on an iPhone as we walk can take us unknowingly into the path of an oncoming truck!

Look up! There is no hurry. Enjoy!

In the The Little Prince Antoine de Saint Exupéry wrote, “Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” (p. 48).

The trick is to see with your heart for imagination and intuition is the heart of enjoyment. Imagine a beautiful world. Imagine a beautiful you. Imagine and it is true!

Imagine that you are at one with the world and you are.

John W. O’Brien, Old Man Grey, 1852.

A New Way of Looking

Here’s the thing: If someone says, “The secret to life is...,” that person is unknowingly (or knowingly) misleading. Why?

Because.

It isn’t a secret. If it was a secret, everyone’s secret would be different.

It’s like looking for keys and not finding them even though they’re right under your nose. You’re in a hurry but waste time running around looking for keys and not finding them because you’re in a hurry! You look repeatedly on the table where they should be (and are) but you don’t see them. Why? In desperation you start looking in weird places. So too do people look for enjoyment in weird place when they don’t have to. Enjoyment is right under your nose.

When you finally do find find your keys, you feel extra extra annoyed because they were there all along, and you wonder: “How could I not see them? Am I blind? (No.) Am I an idiot? (Only partly).”

The power is in the focus. It’s a matter of attention. It’s all a matter of awareness.

In the hurry to find what you’re looking for you see with eyeballs but not with brain. Hurry causes stress. Stress causes the release of cortisol in the brain. Cortisol can kill brain cells in the area responsible for memory (Your Amazing Brain). If you add multi-tasking to a frantic searching, you have zero attention (Brain Rules…).

Searching for keys in all the wrong places is like searching for enjoyment. We don’t see what’s in front of us. Enjoyment is simple. It’s so simple that we don’t get it until we do and then we doubt it because we might be expecting something that isn’t so subtle.

If you’re reading this—wherever you are in this world—you’re probably alive. If you’re alive, you’re halfway there, but the other half isn’t easy. Nature isn’t on your side. Nature isn’t on anyone’s side. Nature is cause and effect.

The trouble is that happiness gets tied to desire and expectations. We define happiness as, Wanting what we want and getting what we get and hoping the two coincide.

You see, it’s because of our brains. We either over-think and make it complicated, we under-think and act on insane urges or we multi-task and miss everything.

We think, “If I have this (or that), I’ll be happy,” but not only do we think that something outside ourselves will make us happy, we’re drawn to things that actually hurt us.

Our brains send messages. Sometimes these messages are destructive—ask anyone in therapy, rehab, prison or who is about to blow himself up. Not only do we deceive ourselves, other people trick us with their deceptions and w can become like pawns in the game of life, sacrificed for someone else’s idea of enjoyment.

So, what’s the answer?

Picture brain messages symbolically like they do in cartoons with a devil-you and an angel-you on each shoulder arguing their case for you to decide (see Internal Multitudes and Enjoyment Decisions). The devil-you often wins and when he does, he gets harder to stop.

Pleasure and habit are linked. Cells that fire together, wire together. In other words: Habits are hard to break (see: It’s not me. It’s my brain.)

It’s like a battle between, on one side, the Rolling Stones at 120 decibels singing “Sympathy For The Devil”, “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a man of wealth and taste,” and on the other side, a string quartet playing “Hallelujah” in your living room.! Who do you think will win?

On one side are symbols of light, innocence and wholesomeness (sappy?) and on the other, just the opposite (exciting?). In the battle between it comes down to focus. What do you choose to enjoy?

Enjoyment of life and of healthy beauty is decided by awareness of what “you” choose to pay attention to.

Do you take the gentle path of life as represented in Wordsworth’s poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud; That floats on high o’er vales and hills; When all at once I saw a crowd; A host, of golden daffodils“? Or is that boring? “Daffodils? You’re kidding!”

Do you prefer your entertainment on the excitingly evil side? How about delightful depravity and edgy cruelty that’s funny too? What’s your pleasure? Do you choose a quiet read, a walk in the park, a pint with a friend, or ‘gorified’ death in a Zombie Apocalypse?

It’s a tough decision for most people.

Subtlety is missed by mobs fed on chatter, drugs, violence, convenience and bread and circuses. A butterfly caught in a web is easily killed by the spider. It takes heart and courage and a focus on what is wholesome to overcome dark greed.

Wholesome isn’t a word used much these days. It alludes to marketing all-natural breakfast cereals and family values but back in the year 1200 wholesome meant “of benefit to the soul.” It comes from the word “whole” meaning “healthy” (undamaged, entire, safe) and “-some” meaning “tending to” (Etymology Dictionary).

Wholesome relates to “Hallow!” as in Hello! Health! Holy! It’s a greeting and a call to health and Hallelujah! (Word Origins).

Imagine: You go to a concert in a high school auditorium but your brain is messed up with problems. You miss the first part before your spirit gets caught up in the music and then… and then…

A switch to whole.

You see where you are. Your face relaxes. Totally still you breathe and your eyes… your eyes! they widen and go slack. You see as if you were life itself.

What was a disheveled auditorium with flickering light bulbs about to die and chattering nuisance people becomes… beautiful. You enter the stream. You are empty absolutely. You know that life runs along like a runaway train as you float in your body behind a face.

A scene.

You look out of yourself self-aware. This moment is captured in the very being of yourself – not as an ego, but as… a spirit.

The purest illuminations come unsought.

You are transfigured but no one knows. How could they? You are alone in yourself but through the eyes of another you see the importance of all this. It’s in relationships and immersion. You’ve put your will to the side and thrown yourself out.

Such is enjoyment seeing.

Cease demanding that life conform to desire. See daffodils and ignore zombies (they aren’t real).

Shifting to Enjoyment

1924. Auto Wash Bowl. Chicago.

The guiding intuition of this philosophy follows the hunch that life is to be enjoyed. It asks that you make enjoyment a priority of epic proportions without actually doing anything in particular. We’re not talking about doing exciting things like zip lines, amusement parks or buying socks. There’s no need for putting yourself through the pressure of a bucket list (see: What Do You Enjoy?). It’s just a matter of shifting your perception of reality.

That’s all.

No biggy.

Let’s get trippy (hippy talk for cool, freaky and groovy). Rather than think of your life in practical terms with all its aches, pains and frustrations, perceive the enjoyment of your life as somewhere between the eternal (not ending) and temporal (ending). It’s easy, just perceive life from multiple vantage points.

Think of yourself as a manual or “standard” transmission in a car. You’re the shifter. Enjoyment is the clutch.

Take the literal experience of your life – you, as you are, where you are – and think of it as a metaphor. Think of your lifespan as a ferryboat. You can float along without noticing, or, you can enjoy it. Think of enjoyment as a symbol. 

A metaphor and a symbol are related, but a metaphor draws a comparison between two distinct objects (as in your lifespan is a ferryboat taking you between birth and death), whereas a symbol is used as a stand-in for a much more complex, and generally more abstract, idea.

The point is this: a symbol is literally a throwing together of the eternal (that which is without ending) and the temporal (present life). To feel the symbol is to go beyond practical. It is to enter a zone of poetry. It’s the words beyond words. Dare it be said: it’s transcendence.

If you can go into the zone of your average 18th century romantic poet like Keats, Blake, Wordsworth or Coleridge, you’ll recognize that a flower isn’t just a flower. A tree isn’t just a tree. You are not just a you and a Cosco isn’t just a Cosco – well maybe it is – but the truth is that there is more to living than just living.

There’s enjoying.

Life is so serious that it isn’t. It’s a paradox. It’s pretty incredible if you think about it. First, there’s a you and then… there isn’t.

Philosophy of Enjoyment Imagination Exercise #42

Not a picture of Rick Ocasek.

Picture LIFE! as your best friend’s girl (like that song of long ago). Picture LIFE! as a beautiful girl always dancing down the street with suede blue eyes (Ocasek, 1978).

Imagine that you are LIFE itself.

You are the music. You dance ‘neath the starry skies except you do it like an idiot.

If you are to enjoy the experience of living as yourself in your situation, if you are not going to go around and around not enjoying yourself like you’re in some kind of cockimamy 1920’s car wash – LIFE! – if it is to be fruitful and not fruitless, futile, frivolous and a big waste of time – LIFE: requires discipline and imagination (among other things).

Look at the faces of people. Study them without creeping them out. You can’t help but notice how people don’t get it. They don’t. They’re hypnotized by themselves. They’re blinded by science. People live unwisely. If not convinced, watch the News on TV. Individuals don’t get the sense of themselves in their surroundings. If they did, they would be amazed and not do half the stuff they do.

A lot of people (excluding philosophers of enjoyment) do not make enjoyment a priority or if they do, they’ve got the wrong idea of what enjoyment really is. Enjoyment isn’t a thing, an object – it’s like love. It’s the spirit of good feeling feeling good! That’s it.

Now: Go forth and enjoy. Make it a priority to spread gentle enjoyment wherever you go with whomever you meet and in so doing, enjoy doing.