Alice Roosevelt Longworth, one of history’s more outrageous characters and the daughter of my favorite U.S. President, once said, “I’m a hedonist. I have an appetite for being entertained. Isn’t it strange how that upsets people?”
Indeed, Alice was not known for holding back; neither her sharp tongue nor her joy in offending others was much absent from her public persona. But Alice’s hedonism manifested primarily as the disruption of political and social mores for women at the time—women who were beautiful, wealthy, and, perhaps most important in her case, the daughters of powerful men. Alice might have confessed it odd that people were upset by her behavior, but she made it clear that offense was her goal all along.
Hedonism is defined as “the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.” As a philosophy of being, however, hedonism is more specific: it is the rigorous pursuit of pleasure combined with the belief that pain should be avoided at all costs. The highest aim, then, of a true hedonist, is to consider to what extent a moral choice might sacrifice pleasure, and then choose whatever will sacrifice the least, regardless of whether those actions are right or wrong.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, by her own admission, was a hedonist to the core. As entertained as I am by the story of her life, I don’t advocate for Alice’s particular brand of pleasure-seeking, which seemed to more often err on the side of meanness. I do, however, think we could all benefit from a bit of hedonism in our lives. If we’re mindful to view pleasure as a natural byproduct of being creatures of an artistic God rather than the sole aim of all human activity, we stand to experience a lot more joy in the ordinary, everyday moments that make up most of our years on earth. It’s not that we don’t have entertainment, after all. We’ve just confused it with real pleasure for so long it’s hard to tell a difference anymore.
Alice’s definition of hedonism was fun, outrageous, and momentary. She was shock value personified. In contrast, true pleasure is joy meant to be savored: the sensation of cool, clean sheets when you climb into bed after a long, hard day; the comfort of reading a novel that makes you feel seen; the realization that someone you love loves you back.
Fun is good, but pleasure is necessary.
In the Genesis story, God creates the universe, the earth, and everything in them. Hidden in plain sight within the Creation narrative is the joy of our Maker, the relish He experiences as Author of beautiful things where none previously existed. God declares goodness over what He crafts at the end of each day, and this goodness is both an inherent quality and an exclamation of delight. It’s a physical fact and an emotion.
Truth and pleasure.
I posit that pleasure, “sensual self-indulgence,” is a gift from our Father. God created our food sources, our habitats, our senses, and our bodies with pleasure in mind (if you don’t believe me, just consider the clitoris), but when we don’t wield this privilege with deep gratitude and care, it devolves into a distorted good. It becomes a “right” which we then lose our ability to appreciate, even as we demand more and more of it.
This careful balancing act is one I’ve been attempting to practice for years. It’s hard work to separate ourselves, even a little, from the materialistic onslaught of our modern age. Where is the line between want and need, fun and pleasure? I think it depends on the person. But what I believe is true for all of us, no matter our answer, is that we cannot afford to misunderstand—for our own spiritual, physical, and mental health—where that distinction lies.
In her book The Art of Frugal Hedonism: A Guide to Spending Less While Enjoying Everything More, author Annie Raser-Rowland writes,
“With an abundance of cheap things to replace broken cheap things, many of us have lost the basic knowledge of how to care for them, and instead have almost fetishized the pleasure of not bothering…
Look at the slightly daggy chair at your kitchen chair and be gobsmacked by the fact that men collected sap oozing from subtropical trees to make the rubber for the nubs on its legs. Huge machines pulled the metal for its frame out of the depths of the earth and heated it until it glowed so as to extrude it into the right shape. Ancient oil was whipped into a frenzy with pigments and catalysts until it became that moulded plastic seat. Do this same thinking to the clock on your wall, the bread on your shelf, and the cheesecake in your fridge.
Be dazzled that you even have this stuff with its stupifying lineage of effort and resources. Be reverential! Be grateful. Then look after it.”
Therein lies the distinction between true pleasure and momentary satisfaction: reverence. We are living, even with financial difficulties or limited personal assets, in an absolute deluge of power and resources. We have stuff available to us that even our great-grandparents couldn’t have imagined as kids, and our appetites grow bigger every day. Could one answer to our search for joy be in the simple acknowledgment of what was sacrificed for such material goods to arrive on our doorstep? Could our desire for pleasure, this God-given pursuit of beauty and goodness, be fulfilled in appreciating what’s underneath the stuff, in the “dazzled” realization that it’s even available to us at all?
This is no mean feat. Ads, influencers, and algorithms (*cough* authors *cough*) are forever tapping into our basic desires with solutions that extend far beyond our actual needs. It was hard enough to live content when there were just commercials, magazine covers, and friends’ houses showing us what we didn’t have; now, those messages of discontent live round-the-clock in our hands. It will take lots of hard work to learn and live out a new narrative, to consider pleasure a thing meant to cost us something we can’t get back—time, attention, energy—rather than a thing that merely costs.
The very work involved in pleasure is part of the experience of pleasure. (Again, consider the clitoris 🤭.) It takes energy to stop the forward momentum of a busy day and listen to the song of a robin. It takes time to walk somewhere instead of drive. It takes attention to read an entire novel or have a deep conversation with a friend instead of scroll on your phone. The time will pass anyway, as they say. So what will be worth it, in the end?
Oscar Wilde wrote, “Simple pleasures are the last refuge of the complex.” It feels like we are all in search of a refuge, doesn’t it? As the world grows ever more confusing, ever more knotty and twisted by demons of its own making, we long for something to bring us comfort. So we buy, we click, we scroll, we devour, and we never get enough. Maybe it’s time we stop and ask ourselves the hard question: If we keep going this way, is “enough” even possible?
Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season, begins tomorrow. Lent is a time when we say no to ourselves, over and over again, in order to say yes to God. We are reminded, through fasting and repentance, what it cost Jesus to be here with us and how much He sacrificed so that we would never have to be separated from Him.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the words “pleasure” and “Lent” in the same sentence before, but if we dig deep into what these forty days are all about, what could be more reverential than gaining a deeper intimacy with God? What could ultimately bring us more pleasure than knowing the Creator of every good and beautiful thing?
Contrary to popular opinion, Lent is not a time for self-improvement but, rather, a time to acknowledge our weaknesses, whatever they may be, and allow God to use them to bring us under His wings. To let Him be our refuge. To remove—for forty days, at least—the hindrance of more, more, more so that we, through His grace, can live free.
And not just free from, but free to.
Free to savor what is before us and thank God that we have it.
Free to relish what cannot be bought.
Free to lose our appetite for artificial pleasures and experience what is really, truly good.
I’ve never attended an Ash Wednesday service before. I’m a former-Baptist-leaning-evangelical-turned-Anglican, and tomorrow I will receive the ashes for the very first time in my life. In a sense, our family’s faith journey over the past year has been the very picture of sacrificing entertainment for the pursuit of pleasure, and it stirs my soul to think of stepping forward to be reminded that I am ash. I am dust. But God does glorious things with ashes. This I know well.
Our former church was nothing less than a blessing to us all those years and you won’t see me decry it now. But where it was lights and stages and famous pastors, our new church is quiet, tucked away, and unassuming. We left behind lots of fun (which was good!) for the pleasure of living more embodied with Christ and His Bride. We have tasted and seen…and we can’t go back to what we once knew.
Maybe tomorrow can be the start of that journey for you.
May we experience the pleasure of following Jesus, wherever He goes.