Our new year resolutions typically concern living a more wholesome, healthy live. Giving up sugar, for example, or exercising more, or not drinking alcohol. All of these are good for us on some level, but they also involve giving up pleasure. People will tell you that they only ate potatoes for a month and that they now don’t crave meat and sugar any more like that’s a victory, when it is in fact succumbing to blandness.
What if instead, we resolved to maximize pleasure for a year? Specifically, the sort of pleasure that doesn’t come easily but that you have to work for. Not the easy numbness that comes from watching TV, but the earned pleasure of house parties and sunsets while camping alone in the wilderness. Eating great food and drinking in the company of those we enjoy, sometimes to excess. Mingling with people we like as much as we can. A year of living viscerally.
There are dangers involved. We may end up with diabetes or a drug addiction. We may run out of money. The resolution may devolve into nothing more than a midlife crisis. Maybe it never was anything else. But at least we’ll have sought the ecstasy that marks the summit of life.
Nehaveigur 