Dear one,
I had pause for thought, when recently I heard this Victor Frankl observation:
“When [people] can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”[1]
At first I was very taken with the implied contrast between “meaning” or “purpose” and “pleasure.” Conceivably, if a person has lost her/his way, if one’s present path increasingly bears little fruit, then any sidetrack, which promises fruitful pleasures, becomes a viable, life-giving option.
In this scenario, “pleasure” becomes one’s “purpose” or “meaning.” Thus, as the moralist within me views the American landscape; as I reflect upon our great abundance, particularly in contrast to our neighbors of South America, Africa, and Asia—who constitute approximately 85% of the world’s population—it seems to me that our identity is very much shaped by our pursuit of pleasure. Apparently then, as our forebears once sought meaning in work as it related to family, community, and region, so now we seek pleasure as our fundamental meaning.
However, I now recall that our forebears wrote “life, liberty, and pleasure,” in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence, as based upon John Locke’s “life, liberty, and property.” Presumably, as their progeny of nearly three centuries later, we are fulfilling their aspirations, whereby life and liberty have been subsumed by pleasure or “happiness,” the word our forebears eventually chose.
Given these initial ramblings regarding Victor Frankl’s observation, I later recognized that Frankl was not establishing an either-or contrast, namely, that purpose is good and pleasure is not; rather, he noted that if “a deep sense of meaning” is lost, then pleasure might distract. But even beyond this recognition, I began to question: Are purpose and pleasure necessarily antithetical? More specifically, are there not pleasures in meaningful pursuits or purposes?
In asking this question, I was not being rhetorical, particularly as my mind turned to those ancient accounts of Genesis 1-2; for there we read that humankind was given the “blessed tasks” of being fruitful and multiplying, of subduing and having dominion (i.e., but not abusing), and of tending. Implicit in these “blessed tasks,” I think but cannot prove, were pleasures beyond my imagining: What could be more marvelous, more pleasurable than a garden, which produced a vast variety of flora and fauna, beyond enumeration, needing “cultivation” and “watching”? Even for those of us who are not gardeners, such would be wondrous—but the wonder is gone, because we sought control, because we sought to be vying gods (Genesis 3:5).
Given our present world (including Putin, the latest vying god), Jesus redirected us: instead of focusing upon the commands of creation, He commanded love and its triangulation: we shall first love our Creator, and then our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:29-31), and once within the flow of this triangle, love moves back and forth between the three—forever, I think.
Whether or not Frankl would have agreed with Jesus, I do not know, but I do think he had the correct order: meaningful purpose precedes meaningful pleasure.
Enjoying,
Stan
[1] Cited by Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck