“I do not find fault with men being drawn into the pursuit of pleasures, BUT for absorbing them entirely in the search for the pleasures that are permitted.”
Alexis de Tocqueville
First of all, thank you again for reading my blog. Click on “follow” to stay up to date with blog entries. To get back to the topic at hand. You may recall that I quoted Socrates saying that bad men live for the sake of eating and drinking, while good men eat and drink for the sake of living. If you did not read this, have a look at the entry posted on 24 February, titled “Wants and Needs - Our Consumptive Dilemma”.
It is true that we sometimes tend to become absorbed in the enjoyment of pleasures to such an extent that we lose our focus in life. Life is surely not all about beer and skittles, peaches and cream; life is not a process of eating and drinking and letting the world go to ruin. There is a lot more to life than that. I am not saying that you should not indulge in any form of pleasure, for that is part of life, however, if you want to be enlightened, you should know from the outset that this is not the sole purpose of life.
According to Charles Baudelaire, the 19th-century poet, we are all weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of time, and there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us, he says. Work, on the other hand, strengthens us. Should we then ultimately choose which one will predominate our lives? I don’t think so, it will be unwise to make you choose, for both are components of our existence. My advice, see that there is a healthy balance between a good dosage of pleasure and work, but let not one of the two be the dominant force.
Have fun!
Sometimes we are caught in a schism
between asceticism and a form of hedonism.
It lies thankfully within ourselves to ruminate
about which one will ultimately dominate…
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