We live in a culture that promotes addiction. Because everything is available to us at the touch of a button or the click of a switch or the swish of a contactless credit card, we naturally gravitate towards what is easiest and gives us the greatest and most immediate reward. We are exactly like those rats in the experiment who were put in a cage with two levers. If they pressed one lever they got food. If they pressed the other lever an electrode in their brain stimulated their pleasure centre. The rats ended up dying of starvation. That's what our genes and evolution have designed us to do.
Constraints and lacks make us more creative - we need to be creative (or maybe, just to work harder) to overcome constraints. Deferred gratification is not a good in itself. If we learn to do it, we acquire the patience, persistence and skill to overcome constraints (lack of money is a constraint). If there are no constraints, we have no need to learn deferred gratification. Just switch on the light, turn on the internet, pour the drink, take the drug, play freecell, watch porn, buy the latest thing.
But there is no deep pleasure (satisfaction?) in pleasure gratified without effort. It has taken me weeks of thinking, model making, drawing and a bit of carpentry to make my table. It's not very good, it's a bit crude. But I have got more real pleasure from all that effort, thought and activity than I would ever have got by just walking into Ikea with my credit card (I don't have one, hence the effort!). In fact the amount of real deep pleasure is in direct proportion to the effort required to acquire the thing or experience. If something is "cheap" or "easy" we instinctively feel it's not worth it. Hence our throw away culture. And in addiction, we are throwing ourselves away (because we're not "worth it" - ironically).
And this afternoon I felt ridiculously happy, and you know what I wanted to do? Have a drink. I couldn't work out why, and then I realised, I just wanted more, more of this happiness, this happiness raised to some new level. And how mad that is, to think that way. Why is this not enough? And I have noticed, each night as I go to bed, a slight niggle, "Is that all? Is that it for today?" which could always before be silenced by another drink, until I was too drunk to care. But now, I'm starting to feel a small sense of satisfaction - another good day, this was enough, and I am tired and I want to go to sleep. So I turn out the light, and within minutes I'm out like a light myself. I used to fight to stay awake, to read another page, another paragraph (often the same paragraph I'd just read, for the fourth time). The last few nights, as soon as I felt my eyes starting to close, I've shut the book and turned the light off. Catching the wave. Doing things differently.
A nice supper with H, rediscovering Elizabeth David, who taught my mother to cook, and who in turn taught me. The kitchen smells lovely. All garlicky and Mediterranean.
Constraints and lacks make us more creative - we need to be creative (or maybe, just to work harder) to overcome constraints. Deferred gratification is not a good in itself. If we learn to do it, we acquire the patience, persistence and skill to overcome constraints (lack of money is a constraint). If there are no constraints, we have no need to learn deferred gratification. Just switch on the light, turn on the internet, pour the drink, take the drug, play freecell, watch porn, buy the latest thing.
But there is no deep pleasure (satisfaction?) in pleasure gratified without effort. It has taken me weeks of thinking, model making, drawing and a bit of carpentry to make my table. It's not very good, it's a bit crude. But I have got more real pleasure from all that effort, thought and activity than I would ever have got by just walking into Ikea with my credit card (I don't have one, hence the effort!). In fact the amount of real deep pleasure is in direct proportion to the effort required to acquire the thing or experience. If something is "cheap" or "easy" we instinctively feel it's not worth it. Hence our throw away culture. And in addiction, we are throwing ourselves away (because we're not "worth it" - ironically).
And this afternoon I felt ridiculously happy, and you know what I wanted to do? Have a drink. I couldn't work out why, and then I realised, I just wanted more, more of this happiness, this happiness raised to some new level. And how mad that is, to think that way. Why is this not enough? And I have noticed, each night as I go to bed, a slight niggle, "Is that all? Is that it for today?" which could always before be silenced by another drink, until I was too drunk to care. But now, I'm starting to feel a small sense of satisfaction - another good day, this was enough, and I am tired and I want to go to sleep. So I turn out the light, and within minutes I'm out like a light myself. I used to fight to stay awake, to read another page, another paragraph (often the same paragraph I'd just read, for the fourth time). The last few nights, as soon as I felt my eyes starting to close, I've shut the book and turned the light off. Catching the wave. Doing things differently.
A nice supper with H, rediscovering Elizabeth David, who taught my mother to cook, and who in turn taught me. The kitchen smells lovely. All garlicky and Mediterranean.
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