Pearls Before Breakfast

Having taken the decision that this year’s theme for me would be joy, I’ve been swotting up on all things pleasurable. In a new book entitled Sex, Drugs & Chocolate: The Science of Pleasure, Paul Martin has a fine old romp through the history of pleasure and the science behind it, coming up with some useful tips for creating a more joyful life.

As pleasure-seeking creatures, we will naturally spend our lives in the pursuit of pleasure, although paradoxically that may not bring us happiness. As Martin writes “Put at its simplest, pleasure is the biological currency which evolved to guide our everyday behaviour. Pleasure and its dark counterpart, pain, are there to encourage us to do ‘the right things’. Pleasure entices us to behave in ways that are likely to be biologically beneficial, while pain discourages us from doing ourselves harm. To some degree, therefore, we are hard-wired to be hedonists, devoting our lives to the pursuit of pleasure.”

The fly in the ointment of the pleasure-seeking equation is, according to Martin, that “For pleasure to do its job as a motivational common currency, it must be short-lived … we habituate quite rapidly to pleasurable sensations, no matter how earthshaking they may be at the time, forcing the determined hedonist to keep increasing the dosage or to seek new thrills. Socrates likened pleasure-seekers to the damned in hell, who are condemned forever to keep trying to fill leaky jars. Psychologists today prefer to call the phenomenon ‘the hedonic treadmill’. And what keeps the treadmill turning? Desire – the force which compels us to keep wanting new things, new experiences, no matter how wonderful our present pleasures may be.”

Essentially, no matter how much you love getting or doing something, it’s going to get old pretty quickly. Martin notes “Solid research evidence shows that people who are highly motivated to acquire money, material goods, social status or celebrity are, on average, unhappier and have poorer mental health than those whose priorities are more balanced.”

The good news comes in understanding that while the intense pleasure of reaching a big goal will ultimately always fade – leaving space for desire to arise anew – we’d enjoy our lives more on a day-to-day basis if we increased the frequency of our smaller pleasures. It’s the little indulgences that are the bread and butter of a happy life, not just the big achievements. That’s not to say that you don’t keep chasing your dreams, but that you don’t forget to enjoy your life as it is now.

As Martin puts it, “Pleasure-seekers who want lasting happiness should therefore concentrate on finding more frequent opportunities for less overwhelming sensations. This means pursuing more of the pleasures in life that many of us take for granted.” He says those pleasures should be “readily available, repeatable at frequent intervals (preferably at least once a day), not too risky and cheap or free (pleasure is not the preserve of the wealthy)” and goes on to offer the following suggestions:

· Sex and chocolate: Should be high on any pleasure-seeker’s list. When used correctly, they deliver intense pleasure as well as improving your mental and physical health.
· Acquiring new information: Studies have shown that keeping the brain active by learning and processing new things stimulates the release of pleasure-giving endorphins.
· Use your nose: We are so pre-occupied with our other senses that the pleasure of smell is overlooked. For me it is in pencil shavings, damp earth after rain, vanilla and Chanel No 19. You will have your favourites. Remind yourself of what they are – and enjoy a good sniff.
· Sitting in silence: An increasingly unfamiliar experience. Besides being pleasurable in its own right, sitting in silence for a while is the simplest method known to science of alleviating mild anxiety.
· Trust people more: The idea that we can gain pleasure from trusting and co-operating with one another is not just wishful thinking. It is based on hard empirical evidence. Numerous studies have shown that it activates the ‘reward centres’ of the brain, leading to pleasurable sensations.

Martin concludes “There are countless other more obvious pursuits – from a spot of gardening or cooking, to appreciating an uplifting piece of music or an exhilarating view – that will work perfectly well to increase your harvest of pleasure. The point is that when it comes to happiness, many of us would do better to ignore the siren calls of desire that tempt us toward novelty or excess, and instead focus on doing more of the everyday pleasures that are familiar and available to all.” Right – that’s me down the bakery for a cupcake, then!

Lord knows why we need a scientist from the Ministry of the Bleeding Obvious to point this out to us, but clearly a life made up of a lot of small, regular pleasures –with its own high points – is preferable to a lot of misery punctuated by the occasional peak experience. Now why is that so hard for us to learn?

Well, apparently the residents of Washington DC are no smarter than the rest of us when it comes to the little things. A couple of years ago, the Washington Post set up an experiment where the renowned virtuoso classical violinist, Joshua Bell, busked to a morning commuter crowd at L’Enfant Plaza metro station with his 1713 Stradivarius to see if anyone would stop to listen. They wanted to know if, “in a banal setting, at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”. In short, hardly.

It took three whole minutes of exquisite musicianship for even one person to turn their head and notice the music, even though they kept on walking. Six minutes passed before the first person actually stopped to listen and in the three quarters of an hour that Bell played, only seven people stopped, while 1,070 hurried by. Of those who did listen, few recognised the extraordinary quality of the performance and only one person recognised the musician. Before we label Washingtonians as total philistines, we have to realise that – given the same set of circumstances in the rush hour commute – we’d probably do the same. How sad is that? Our lives are not built with space for spontaneous beauty and pleasure unless we make them so.

This week, start as you mean to go on. Take pleasure in the small things. Make a list of the things that bring you joy and start scheduling opportunities to enjoy them into the diary – people you adore, places you love, scents that inspire you, food that makes you swoon. Cast your mind back to past pleasures and enjoy the memories. What were the real highlights for you? Were they big things you chased or small, spontaneous pleasures. Remember you can have both, just make sure that pleasure in small doses is a frequent prescription for you if more lasting happiness is what you’re really after.

If you’d like to know more about the Washington Post experiment you can read the full story at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html and see the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw.

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