If It Makes You Happy

The love of pleasure is destined by its very nature to defeat itself and end in frustration.

• Thomas Merton

Why should it be so, that one becomes frustrated with pleasure? On a very basic level love and pleasure are intertwined. One loves what brings pleasure. Perhaps not at first—pleasure often appears with the taint of guilt which only fades with time and repetition—but eventually.

Is it possible to have love in the absence of pleasure? It is not uncommon to hear an athlete remark on the love of suffering. However, is it not more likely that the endurance of physical pain triggers a psychological pleasure? The belief that one can endure more than the next fellow is most definitely a stroke to the ego. Is it truly a love of suffering, then, or a love of the feeling of superiority?

One has a pleasure tolerance as surely as a pain tolerance. As time passes what was once highly pleasurable seems less so. Relationships burst to life in a springtime of pleasure—physical, emotional, mental—and time stands still as love blooms. Or does it? Perhaps the heart is warmed not by love but by the fires of pleasure. The ego proclaims this new love the best, the one it’s been awaiting. Until autumn when the pleasure fades and the original love grows cold. If one has not troubled to look beyond the pleasure, winter surely follows. Would love go so quietly?

A pleasure focus must activate the ego and the ego’s judgment, for pleasure is a comparative assessment. The ego cannot long survive in a garden where true love resides. Perhaps the good monk was saying the love of pleasure is truly no love at all.