Hard Work or Hedonism

Thoughts on our puritanical value system and how to find a way out

I noticed something today. I noticed how badly I want to write and create and share my thoughts somewhere where someone might hear them…and then I noticed that I have been holding that activity hostage as a way to motivate me to do other things.

“You can’t write a substack post until you figure out what’s for dinner tonight.”

“You can’t record a podcast episode until you declutter your kids’ closet.”

“You can’t comment on the book “Women Who Run With Wolves” until you actually FINISH it.”

This list could go on for miles.

The problem is, keeping myself from doing work I DO enjoy doesn’t actually motivate me to do the work that isn't calling to me. Instead I just end up sitting paralyzed because I won’t let myself do the thing I want to do and I don’t want to do the thing I feel like I HAVE to do, so the only thing in motion is my whirlwind of a brain that spins and spins until I’m exhausted and all I have the energy for is TikTok or a nap.

I wonder what would happen if I stopped stopping myself from doing the things I feel like doing.

If I were to actually enter an experiment of doing the the things I FEEL like instead of the things I THINK I should do…it would fly in the face of some core childhood (and adulthood) learnings.

“Sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do.” “You don’t know what’s good for you.” “You need to work hard if you want to play hard.” “Work before rest.” “He who is compelled in all things is a slothful servant.” “The idle mind is the devils workshop.”

I don’t know…I feel like I’m making sayings up at this point, but I’m sure there are plenty of pithy puritanical statements that have to do with telling our own feelings and desires to stuff it.

It reminds me of this scene from Croods where Nicholas Cage’s character (a caveman) is telling a story to teach his daughter a lesson about being curious and stepping out of the well worn path of routine. (I can’t do it justice here, so go watch it using the link and come back!)

Our culture has made hard work and sacrificing pleasure into a value in and of itself—and we’ve done this by presenting it as a choice with life or death consequences. Be productive or you will end up starving on the streets. Oh, here’s a good one from a rowing coach named Wyatt Allen: “Most criminals in prison can trace their crime to their first murderous act—that of killing time.” (Melodramatic much? Hahahaha.)

But IS there any intrinsic value in sacrificing pleasure and making ourselves miserable? Shouldn’t values be intrinsically determined based on what brings us pleasure (at least in the long run)? And sure, working hard at something can bring a ton of satisfaction and pleasure….but frankly, making dinner every night for my family and picking up my house only really brings me pleasure if I felt like doing it BEFORE I started OR if I’m purely doing it with selfish intent (e.g. I’m in the mood for homemade Zuppa Toscana for dinner and I really want to enjoy the feeling of a clean house today). Otherwise, it just makes me feel tired and resentful of the people I’m cleaning up after or cooking for.

I think this whole “sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do” philosophy is just another tool of white supremacy, patriarchy, and adultism to control oppressed people, so that the people in power CAN do the things they want to do. We act like we don’t want things that are good for us. Like people can’t be trusted to act in their own best interest OR that by acting in their own best interest they are somehow NOT acting in their own best interest.

I’m feeling confused just trying to explain this weird philosophy that so many of us whole-heartedly believe in. We really believe that Of COURSE you have to do things you don’t want to do in order to have a life you love. How does that make ANY sense?????? Because, as Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” If we are spending our days forcing ourselves to do things we don’t enjoy….than we will spend our lives forcing ourselves to do things we don’t enjoy. Doesn’t it make more sense to trust that as we do the things we want to do, we will get better and better at knowing what it is that we ACTUALLY want and our choices will get better and better at reflecting that?

I love watching people starting to pushback against America’s puritanical value system. I especially find it notable that women of color are really starting to take up space in this arena. I am currently (at my leisure) reading “Set Boundaries, Find Peace”, “Rest is Resistance”, and “Pleasure Activism.” All POWERFUL books written by incredibly insightful women who are showing us the way out of this capitalistic, patriarchal, puritanical hell-scape that we are living in.

To close, I want to include an excerpt from the book I have been quoting the most this year, “The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible” by Charles Eisenstein. This is from his chapter titled “pleasure” and I will do my best to refrain from just including the entire chapter here (but it is seriously SO good):

To trust pleasure is to controvert norms and beliefs so deep that they are part of our very language. I have already mentioned the equation of “hard” with “good” and “easy” with “bad.” The fact that words like “selfish” and “hedonist” are terms of disparagement speaks to the same basic belief. But the logic of interbeing tells us that among our greatest needs are the needs for intimacy, connection, giving, and service to something greater than oneself. Meeting these needs, then, is the source of our greatest pleasure as well.

Pleasure and desire are a natural guidance system that directs organisms toward food, warmth, sex, and other things that meet their needs. Are we to imagine that we are exceptions to nature’s way? Are we to imagine that we’ve graduated past that guidance system, moved on to a higher realm in which pleasure is no longer ally, but enemy? No. That is a thought form of Separation. The guidance system of pleasure works in us too. It does not stop at the basic animal needs of food, sex, and shelter. In all its forms, it guides us toward the fulfillment of our needs and desires, and therefore to the unfolding of our potential.

To trust it again, after all these centuries, is a journey that might begin, for those of us who are most alienated from it, with the conscious, deliberate fulfillment of whatever trivial pleasures are available, building the habit of self-trust. As that muscle of discernment grows stronger, we can use it to choose greater and greater pleasures, which correspond to the fulfillment of deeper and deeper desires. It is for good reason that hedonism has always carried a faintly subversive air. To choose pleasure, even the most superficial, and to embrace and celebrate that choice, is to set in motion a process that upends the Story of the World. Eventually, the superficial pleasures become tedious and unsatisfying, and we move on to the kind of pleasure we call joy.

I am happy to discuss and debate this idea with anyone in the comments, but for today—THIS Kimber girl is resting in some hedonism—eat, drink, and be merry (and write substack posts, and go outside, and play a game with your kids, and leave the clothes in that pile on the floor) for tomorrow we die!