Brain Food #723
Kiss the joy as it flies
Thoughts of the day
The pleasure paradox, or paradox of hedonism, suggests how the pursuit of pleasure can make attaining pleasure all the more difficult.
What we can do when we come across special moments, or moments of pleasure, is to simply live in them and to embrace them, or as William Blake suggests in his short poem Eternity (which takes but a moment to read) to ‘kiss the joy as it flies’.
The first step in experiencing this form of joy is through maintaining an openness to the world, to recognise when something special is happening right before our eyes. The second is in letting the joy pass.
The best way to ruin a moment is to try and make it last forever. Even a photo can never fully capture a point in time; it can only revive our memories of it, which also change and start to fool us with the passing of time. Pleasure is fleeting, and binding ourselves to something momentary goes against the nature of time itself.
Whatever joys you find this weekend, give into them.
Eternity
by William Blake
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the wingèd life destroy;
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise.
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