Transcript

I’m Major Jackson, and this is The Slowdown.

This summer, I returned to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. I came upon this quote just when I decided to make some life changes. He said, “If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.”

Ever since, I’ve pondered what it means to resist pleasure. Who would want to do that, other than those who have taken monastic vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience? Why is it that Kierkegaard said possibility never disappoints? What does it mean to live on the edge of one’s hunger, or becoming, yet not act?

After a long hike I typically enjoy a cold beer. It’s refreshing and cooling; it satisfyingly ends a long morning of steep ascents. Drinking a beer, for me, is not a temptation but a ritual of completion. Yet, after a few sips, I find that the joy of drinking dissipates; often the beer doesn’t taste as good as the first quaff. This fleetingness points to the fact that we are never infinitely satiated. Fulfilling the desire is always lesser in comparison to the actual desire.

Over the past few months I have denied myself certain habits of consumption. Some of my life changes were owed to a spiritual audit, to being awake to the deprivations in the world. I no longer wished to accept other people’s sufferings and lack without some act of solidarity. I enjoyed practicing self-control, committing to health goals, but I also argued more with myself. It isn’t that my pleasures are inherently bad, or that I need to resist them — I’ve just felt a highlighted dissonance. Our interconnectivity makes our posting about our blessings seem deaf to the widespread pain in the world. I think this changes how we experience them.

Today’s poem knows the world is enticing, seductive, full of possibilities. The hack is to consciously curate our pleasures — the slow, intentional cherishing of a life well-lived.

Leaving
by Madeleine Cravens

Not the pleasure of lovers but the pleasure of letters,
a pleasure like weather, delayed and prepared for,
not the pleasure of lessons but the pleasure of errors,
of nightmares, of actors in the black box of a theater,
not the pleasure of present but the pleasure of later,
the pleasure of letters and weather and terror, asleep
by the lake, unable to answer, the pleasure of candles,
their wax on the table, not the pleasure of saviors
but the pleasure of errors, not the pleasure of marriage
but the pleasure of failure, the pleasure of characters 
like family members, their failures and errors, their
laughter and weather, the pleasure of water, terrible 
rivers, not the pleasure of empire but the pleasure
of after, our failure to keep an accurate record, not
the pleasure of tethers but the pleasure of strangers,
the terrible strangers who will become your lovers,
not the pleasure of novels but the pleasure of anger, 
your failure to answer all of my letters, the pleasure 
of daughters, the pleasure of daughters writing letters
in April, the failure of orchards, the terror of mothers,
not the pleasure of planners but the pleasure of errors.

“Leaving" by Madeleine Cravens from PLEASURE PRINCIPLE copyright © 2024 by Madeleine Cravens. Used by permission of Simon & Schuster and Massie & McQuilkin as agents of the author.