How To Enjoy Yourself
A guide on how to enjoy your existence.
Invitations to pleasure and enjoyment are everywhere in our culture. Everything around us constantly creates hunger for things that we perhaps did not even know about.
[Volupta previously explored the Ritual of Pleasure - focusing on the embodied and sensual gratification. ]:
Today we shall explore a more existential dimension of pleasure, which we may more precisely describe as enjoyment. And while similar, these two carry nuances. When we say pleasure, we usually think of something immediate and rather passive — it is satisfaction of sensual, sensorial or other “voluptuous” needs. Enjoyment, however, we tend to associate with something more active, and something that can have a lasting, rather than an immediate impact. It carries an element of growth and deep satisfaction. For example, we can have the pleasure of eating a piece of chocolate and the enjoyment of a meaningful discussion or even a debate on a topic. And of course, they do not have to be separate (and usually are not).
When we seek “enjoying ourselves” as women, what we seek essentially is acceptance, pleasure (as we said, they are not separate nor have to exclude one another) and deep satisfaction in being who we are. We seek to “enjoy” what we are — our name, our face, our body, our little vices, our life story (challenges, lessons, errors, triumphs and everything else). We feel ourselves, we breathe from our diaphragm and our life ceases to be the constant war with ourselves. When we enjoy ourselves, we are no longer hiding from the Sun (or life).
[This is something all humans have to go on a journey for, but since Volupta focuses on women’s experiences, we shall remain there.]
Women can often be consumed with feelings of self-denial, rooted in the deep conviction that we are unworthy and that our value comes from sacrificing ourselves for the benefit of others (partners, children, civilisation or anything else). Yet nobody likes a “dry” and miserable woman. Not partners, not children, not civilisation. The alternative offered—the contrived self-love, the boundaries so rigid that nothing can come in, selfishness so relentless that we become a ruthless tyrant, cutting off, not only partners, but even friends who dare not be “perfect” and serve us like the slaves we demand them to be—is equally unsatisfactory.
Inflated sense of self commonly occurs after suppression, but neither offer long-term satisfaction. The “self-love” also wears out, and some women, reacting to its nihility, may try to find solutions in religious austerity or “traditional” life that demands sacrifice and self-denial. Volupta often points out and shall point it out again — the goal for us is not to swing from one extreme to another, eternally reacting, but to find equilibrium and harmony. The seemingly opposite ends are not opposite, they are different reactions to the same centre. In this case, that centre can be “existential peace” or “fulfilment”.
To truly enjoy yourself and your existence, you first must cease running away from yourself. There must be radical acceptance of who you are in the moment. If your life is a mess — accept that. If you do not know — accept not knowing. This is not “You are perfect as you are” which we often hear which only feeds our stagnation. The perfection of who we are in the moment isn’t in the fact we are “complete” or “finite” in that particular state or a moment, but that in every moment we are perfect sum total of our life and our story. But the story must continue, and our narcissistic rigidty may be in fact what is stopping it from unfolding.
While there may be “nothing to achieve” on some grand scale, there is a story and life to experience. And… Enjoy.