When you follow fun, misery follows you… When you follow Knowledge, fun follows you. – Sri Sri Ravishankar
After the gloom and doom of the past few weeks, India is beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. States are starting to lift the harsh lockdowns. We all are hoping that someday soon, life will be the same as we knew it, before that damned virus hit us, and took us by storm. With this lockdown, lives all around have hit a reset button. However, with the lifting of curbs, we will be free(almost) to use the freedom, the way we want. My goal behind writing this blog post is to convince you that pleasure seeking, also called hedonism, wouldn’t be the best use of the freedom, that we will be getting soon.
Pleasure can be of various kinds some good for our growth some not so much. In this post, by pleasure I mean the pleasures that come easy. e.g : Watching television, alcohol consumption, smoking, sex, masturbation, orgasm. Human mind is hard wired in a way that it makes us go after pleasures that come easy. For the past few weeks or so, most liquor stores, bars, clubs are shut. As a result many of us, have had our ways of seeking pleasure, curbed. On the other hand, in India, Netflix subscriptions have reached an all time high. People are busy binge watching, videos on YouTube for hours.
This behavior is quite understandable, since we are used to living life in autopilot mode. When we have nothing to do, we are so much at dis ease with ourselves, that our monkey mind wreaks havoc. In order to prevent itself from facing the distressing thoughts that it itself created, our mind distracts itself by seeking pleasure.
So what’s the problem in seeking pleasure, after all, YOLO(You Only Live Once) ! I argue that building your life around seeking pleasure, makes it even more miserable, here’s why:
Anything in life that’s worth having comes after a man has gone through numerous trials and tribulations. For that a warrior like mentality is needed. If you are addicted to the ways of pleasure, your mind gets too soft. This makes you meek when surrounded by vicissitudes of life. Therefore, when life throws a stiff challenge at you, you find a way, through shirking responsibility, being deceitful or tapping out of the fight.
This can also be explained through the laws of Karma Yoga. Karma Yoga says that what we give to others, comes back to us. This law of Karma Yoga is as universal as the law of gravity. Thus according to the law of Karma Yoga, the only way to receive happiness, is to give happiness to others. We all want to live a happy, fulfilling life. That’s what makes us run behind pleasures, as we think that it would make us happier. It does, for a while, until the high lasts. However, the real secret behind living a fulfilling life is to do something that adds value to someone else’s life. The more value you add in people’s lives, the more happiness you will receive in your life. Whereas, the nature of pleasures we seek is such that, it’s selfish in nature. The more selfish we are, the more we think of ourselves, the more miserable we become.
Dear reader, if you managed to read this far, thank you for reading. I would love to hear your views in the comments below. I really enjoyed writing a post again, after a long break. 🙂
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