Fully Grown Pleasure

Sometimes one might sit down and ask. What’s the point? Life is fleeting, purposeless, aimless. Why? It’s very easy to get lost in existential which really just depress you. For example, I roomed with some awesome guys freshman year at Purdue. They were, and still are, some of my best friends. But I rarely see them now, and I can only assume that, post Purdue, I will either see them very rarely, or never. At first glance, that seems incredibly sad. The average thinker would be inclined to agree. One who thinks a bit longer might conjecture “Well, the joy of the relationship was worth the pain of loss.” Yet, thankfully, C.S. Lewis is here to save us from thinking such sad thoughts. In his book Out of the Silent Planet, a man, Dr. Ransom, is sent to Mars and meets strange and wonderful beings there. One of them, named Hyoi, says this,

“A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking, Hmān [Human], as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing. The séroni [Another species on Mars] could say it better than I say it now. Not better than I could say it in a poem. What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure, as the crah is the last part of a poem. When you and I met, the meeting was over very shortly, it was nothing. Now it is growing something as we remember it. But still we know very little about it.What it will be when I remember it as I lie down to die, what it makes in me all my days till then–that is the real meeting. The other is only the beginning of it.”

When I first read this quote, I just put down the book. Just the immense truth of that paragraph felt like a brick hitting me in the chops. I bold-ed my two favorite parts. Looking at the second, we see that, in fact, losing friends isn’t losing friends at all. What people make you in all your days until death, that is the real meeting. A friend, whether past or present, is going to impact you in ways that, somewhat surprisingly, will last for the rest of your life. Even if simply just a memory, is that not an impact? We tend to only think of “impacts” as events which change our character, but I would wager that memories are part of our character. Just earlier today, I was watching a video on my Facebook which was a video montage of a trip I went on with my two best friends in high school. As silly as the video was, it evoked a surprising amount of emotion in me. I was remembering the trip and everything it entailed. That was, singlehandedly, the best trip of my life. Watching the video, I am reminded of what Hyoi says, What you call remembering is the last part of the pleasure. The memories of our experiences are part of those experiences. Which implies that our experiences are ever growing. What is an experience without remembering it? If I told you you could do anything you wanted today, but you wouldn’t remember it tomorrow, it would be pointless right? It would be cool for that day, but everything would return to normal shortly afterwards.

This is the problem with instant gratification. Let’s take, for an example, a day of laziness. As a teenage college dude, I am inclined to spend entire Saturdays sleeping and playing video games. Seems like a great experience at the time. Yet the next day, I think, “What the heck Chris, you seriously just wasted a whole day?” I will now reference my first bolded part of the quote, “A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered.“ Aha! Now I see why those lazy days, eating entire bags of chips, and spending money on novelties all seem terrible. Because they are not fully grown pleasures. They started off well, but as they continued to grow in memory, they turned sour. The word for this is “regret”. It’s a very common question used in many circumstances, “do you have any regrets?”. Basically asking, are your pleasures growing fully? Are you choosing to plant pleasures which last longer than a day? Will these pleasures grow in memory for the rest of your life? Sure makes me think differently about what I choose to do with my day…

One hears stories almost every day of some famous person screwing up in some new magnificent way. Or sometimes you just hear sad interviews of once famous actors or atheletes, who, in their age, are starting to realize that money can’t buy happiness. It’s so obvious that the choices that they made, the life they lived, were all aimed at the idea that pleasure and memory are separate. Yet as they age, they begin to realize that none of their pleasures are fully grown. In memory, the pleasures become regrets, and they are left with nothing. Our society glorifies the instant gratification of oneself, but take a deeper look at what pleasure is, and you’ll see that making long term choices is an investment into your future self. And that’s just cool to think about. Knowing that every good choice you make is literally giving your future self a better life and more happiness.

Well what does this mean for those who have already made the bad choices? Maybe now you are filled with regret, and you want to have the life where your pleasures are fully grown. Thankfully we are loved by a God who is much bigger than our pleasures. More on that in a bit. First, let us take a look at Eve. In Genesis 3, she was tempted into instant gratification much like we are today. She saw something which looked good so she took it. What a common theme of humanity. Let me think, what else is common in humanity. . . Oh yes, sin. I firmly believe, in almost all cases, that instant gratification is sin. We never regret honorable and holy actions, and we always regret sin (if not now, we will later). We have within us the knowledge of right and wrong, a conscience. While some of humanity has stuffed their conscience down so deep they can’t hear it, it’s still there. So now, you who thought you’ve been making decently good choices and you’re not filled with “half grown pleasures” see that you are, in fact, wrong. We are all filled with half grown pleasures. The products of sin.

Where’s the catch? Now what do I have to live for? Well God, the one who made everything, loves us. Deeply. He sent his only son to be our payment for our lives of instant gratification, of sin. Hebrews 9:26-28 “. . . But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him” Well this is great! We’ve been saved! Our God loves us so intensely that he sent his perfect son, who never indulged in instant gratification. We have been forgiven. The entire standard for living then becomes not the sum of our experiences, but for God. God, somehow, loves ALL of us unconditionally. Meaning regardless of our choices, however many half grown pleasures we’ve decided to create, he is in love with who we are. All we have to do is accept his sacrifice as truth and decide to start living for something bigger than ourselves, our Lord. Which, ironically, is one of the easiest ways to avoid instant gratification.

In closing, I will now turn to some song lyrics by Owl City. This is the song Shooting Star.

Close your tired eyes, relaxing them.
Count from 1 to 10 and open them.
All these heavy thoughts will try to weigh you down, but not this time.

Way up in the air, you’re finally free, and you can stay up there, right next to me.
All this gravity will try to pull you down, but not this time.

When the sun goes down, and the lights burn out,
Then it’s time for you to shine.
Brighter than the shooting star, so shine no matter where you are.
Fill the darkest night, with a brilliant light,
’cause it’s time for you to shine.
Brighter than a shooting star, so shine no matter where you are, tonight.

Our heavy thoughts, our regrets, our half grown pleasures, they try to weigh us down. But not this time, this time we will be way up in the air. We’re free. When things are hopeless, everything else is dark, then it’s time for us to take the responsibility, we will be the ones to shine, to create hope, to create full grown pleasures. Regardless of where you are, you can make decisions now that affect the rest of your life and those around you. Choose carefully.