Pleasure Is Not a Reward
There is a very convincing way to postpone pleasure that doesn’t look like postponing life at all. First you finish your work, sort out the house, deal with the things you’ve been putting off, make a little more money and get everything under control. Then you can relax. Then you can travel, go somewhere beautiful, spend an afternoon doing nothing, have a long dinner, open the good bottle of wine or finally do that thing you’ve been wanting to do for months.
The problem is that this moment almost never arrives. Life keeps producing new things to deal with. There is always another email, another expense, another project, something to organise, something to fix, something that suddenly becomes more urgent than the thing you wanted to do for yourself. You finish one list and quietly start another one. If pleasure is always waiting on the other side of everything that needs to be done, you can spend years preparing to enjoy a life that is already happening.
I used to think about pleasure much more as something that came after the important things. Now I see it differently. Pleasure belongs in the plan too. If there is time for work, appointments, groceries, exercise and all the practical things that keep life functioning, there also has to be time for the things that make that life enjoyable. Travel, food, music, sex, flirting, beautiful places, people you love, lying in the sun, discovering something new or simply having a few hours in which nothing needs to be achieved are not prizes for good behaviour. They are part of life itself.
And pleasure doesn’t always need a reservation, a plane ticket or an entire free weekend. Sometimes you suddenly have an hour. You can automatically fill it with another task, scroll through your phone or decide that an hour isn’t enough to do anything interesting. Or you can go somewhere.
Visit the exhibition you’ve been meaning to see. Sit in a café you’ve passed twenty times but never entered. Call a friend and ask if they’re nearby. Walk down to the sea and stay there for a while. Try a restaurant without waiting for an occasion. Put on something you like and go out simply because the evening is beautiful. There are so many small experiences we keep saving for “sometime” even when the opportunity to have them is already sitting right in front of us.
I think that’s the part we forget when we’re busy organising our lives: the moment is happening now. Of course we need plans, money, responsibilities and some idea of where we’re going, but life can’t exist entirely in preparation for a better version of itself. There has to be a point when you actually use the city you live in, enjoy the people around you, touch the person you love, taste the food, take the trip, swim in the sea, stay for another glass of wine or say yes to something simply because it sounds fun.
This doesn’t mean abandoning responsibilities whenever something more entertaining appears. It means giving pleasure the same legitimacy we already give everything else. You don’t need to feel guilty because there are still things left on your list. There will always be things left on your list.
Maybe that’s why I no longer think pleasure should be earned. I want a life with projects, plans and things I’m building, but I also want beautiful places, desire, good conversations, spontaneous afternoons, travel, food, music, intimacy and experiences I didn’t schedule three weeks in advance. I don’t want all of that waiting at the finish line because there isn’t really a finish line.
So if there is something you’ve wanted to do for a while and you suddenly have the time, maybe this is the time. Not after everything is finished, not when life becomes perfectly organised and not when you’ve worked hard enough to justify it. Go to the exhibition. Meet your friend. Order the dessert. Sit by the sea. Take the afternoon. Sometimes the opportunity to enjoy your life isn’t coming later. It’s the free hour you have today.
