Resisting Pleasures

 

One of the things as I have continued to move through life that I have discovered is learning give things up.

I cannot confess to you that this came as a conscious decision or an accident.  It just seems to be something that has been happening organically over the last few years.

It happens in many and varied ways:  setting aside alcohol (for the most part), practicing reuse/reuse/recycle/ do without out instead of immediately spending, learning to be more satisfied with the simple than the complicated, learning to make a practice of a life spent doing, not a life spent entertaining myself ,and learning (very slowly) to let go of pride and the need to always be right or even recognized.

I have found it important as it is helping me learn to do an important thing:  learn to say no to myself.

In so many ways, I am my own worst enemy.  I coddle myself,  I make excuses for myself, I do almost everything in my power to please myself.  Every time I learn to say no, I infinitesimally strengthen my self discipline.

It is not that for most of these anything is particularly wrong with these things.  It is that, practiced without control, they make us slaves of them.  Pleasure practiced unstintingly and without the ability to say no always ends with the inability to control one's self.

I am not speaking here precisely of the physical elements that cannot be overcome (although they too can be bad; addiction is an awful thing).  I am speaking of those things which do not become physical or psychological addictions which we still find ourselves unable to refuse.

I suppose this could be considered a form of ascetism, although I am no practicing ascetic - rereading The Sayings Of The Desert Fathers I am about as far away from that rigorous life as could be expected.  But neither is it the complete yielding of the hedonist to everything that could present one with pleasure.

It does give one wonderful benefit, which Epictetus refers to above:  it frees one from the slavery of whatever pleasure is in question.  When I resist a pleasure simply for the sake of doing so - when I refuse to overeat or spend the money or let the incident pass without anger (because pride can be a pleasure like any other), I prove to myself that I can either have the thing or let it go.

Which is how we would define an adult, would we not?  The ability to manage one's life and exercise pleasures at our decision, rather than being in a place where we do whatever we want whenever we want - in other words, we act as children, fulfilling every pleasure thought that comes into our brain.

We do not expect children to act except at children - but we expect adults to act as adults.  Sadly perhaps, Western Civilization has in many ways adopted the actions of children - of fulfilling any pleasure at any time - as the real evidence of freedom.  In point of fact it is quite reversed:  adults control, children cannot.  And the difficulty will become - and may already be - that for many, the shackles have already quietly slipped on their wrists, and they simply do not realize it.