To Find Happiness Seek The Kind of Pleasure That Overloads Your Senses
The sun was setting over the Tuscan valley as I sat outside a monastery high on the hill above Florence. The monks calming echoing chant filled the air as the wind brought the smell of roses. I dipped my spoon into my chocolate orange gelato and savored the sweet creaminess on my tongue.
I wasn’t lost in the past wondering about things that had happened. I wasn’t worried about the future or a to-do list, there was no need to fix anything in my life, but instead I simply relished the perfection of this beautiful sensory overload.
It had taken me a full week of living in Florence to be able to come to this spot and just “be” instead of thinking. When I experienced the quiet mind, I finally understood what it meant to be present.
For the first part of my life, I’d been a student of meditation, self-help, motivation, and psychology. I’d sought answers to life’s deeper meaning of who made God, and what creates happiness. Having come from a family where fighting, struggle, and worry were a part of everyday life, I’d wanted to reach out from those depths, from the part of me that needed to seek perfection in order to find joy, freedom, and success.
There’d been countless mindset courses, uncovering old beliefs that didn’t serve me, meditation for hours on end to find deeper levels of spirituality, and years spent studying every religion. I knew every motivational quote, had found the peace in nature, and had let go of traumas from my past. I knew how to create goals and pursue them with everything that I had.
In all of it, no one had ever told me I had the right, the permission to be joyful just because I was alive; that joy, love, and contentment didn’t come from accomplishments, goal completion, nor within a weight, size, financial situation, or in giving enough to everyone else in order to feel worthy of the beauty life wanted to show to me.
The moment in Italy reminded me of a homily my priest had given. He spoke of a man who had been an addict. As he was working his recovery, he didn’t believe he deserved love; he’d harmed too many people, done too many bad things, he was the scum of the earth.
My priest said to him, “Worth is never in question when it comes to love. Think of love as the sun. We all get to enjoy the sun — the sinner and the saint equally. No one is pushed away from that warmth. You can turn or hide away and pretend it doesn’t exist, but the sun will still be there.”
The man listened to his words and took them to heart. Each day he went and sat in the sun. At first, he didn’t feel worthy of the sun; it felt too good and he didn’t deserve this much happiness, but he forced himself to sit there for an hour each day. The first month was torturous as he listened to his mind tell him how undeserving he was. He replayed all the horror and pain he’d caused. The memories of his childhood ran like movies, and he wanted to escape the pain — to reach for a drink, or doing anything that would cause the numbness so that he could return to the level of self-hatred he’d become accustomed to living, but he stayed in the sun and fought the temptation.
A month passed, and a moment came when the pain lifted. He felt the soft breeze on his skin, the sun on his face warming him. Love filled his heart and for the first time he saw the children who’d everyday had been there playing on the swings, laughing as they asked to be pushed higher. He began to bring books that brought him joy, reading for pleasure as he took in his surroundings.
Another month passed, and he recognized that the longing for happiness and this simple pleasurable experience had overpowered his need for the pain. No longer did he wish to reach for a drink, instead he wanted to reach for joy. For the first time in his life he felt worthy.
When the 90th day came, he sat basking in how life’s beauty reflected not only from the world around him but also from within. Something caused him to turn around and he saw that his body cast a shadow on the ground. He thought about how he lived in that shadow for too long, and that there were so many people who didn’t know how to escape it. He began the journey to turn around and give this feeling to another who needed to know that they too were worthy of sunlight and love.
Each day we get a choice. We can bask in the beauty of this world, we can get lost in the sensual experience of all life has to offer, or we can look for the pain, the loathing, the unhappiness.
We think it’s so hard to find joy in a world filled with what seems like darkness. Yet oftentimes the beauty is right in front of us, without need for anything more than to feel the sunlight on our face, the breeze on our skin, to savor the yumminess of something decadent, or to listen to the sounds around us that sing to our soul.
Yet, in our lives so filled with technology we forget to experience these simple pleasures. Instead, when in our best moments we think about how it can be shared on social media or worse we don’t feel the moment because we’re sucked into our screens oblivious to the real life around us. It’s as if that loving sunlight is competing with back lit screens to show us its beauty.
True happiness, a life without regrets, doesn’t come in the absence of situations or problems we want to change, or in completion of goals. We aren’t deserving someday of our dreams or joy. We are right now able to go outside, feel the rain or the sun on our face, laugh with someone we love or by ourselves. We are able to heal the rough edges of our fast-paced lives by simply stopping and experiencing the beautiful world around us with our five senses.
Today you are worthy. Today you are loved. Today let the sunlight and the sensory pleasure of living be your healing.
