Listen to filmmaker Woody Allen in a recent interview: “It’s hard for me to enjoy anything because I’m aware how transient things are. Yes, there are strategies of surviving…. There are times when you think, ‘My God, life is sweet, it’s nice,’ and thoughts of mortality are in abeyance. You know, watching the Marx Brothers or a Knicks game or listening to great jazz, you get a great feeling of ecstasy…. But then it passes, and the dark reality of life starts to creep back in.”
Chilling words. And their effect may be so stark because they resonate keenly in our own lives.
When pleasure has gone, it either leaves behind honor or dishonor, joy or sorrow. To know authentic joy we must go beyond the simple categories of pain and pleasure, to search for what gives meaning to our patterns of life.
For philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, enjoyment was once the highest principle guiding his decisions. However, he later wrote that this pursuit radically failed him. Here’s what he said: “In the bottomless ocean of pleasure, I have sounded in vain for a spot to cast anchor. I have felt the almost irresistible power with which one pleasure drags another after it, the kind of adulterated enthusiasm which it is capable of producing, the boredom, the torment which follow.”
Interesting conclusions about pleasure, are they not? For both the filmmaker and the philosopher, every pleasure is diminished by the knowledge that it doesn’t last and by its inability to satisfy completely.
This brings me to my next principle as we consider a philosophy of pleasure: Pleasure is a means, not an end. Joy is the greater end. Friend, every pleasure that is sought as an end in itself ultimately ceases to satisfy, and that hunger for a joy that rises above everything else persists.
If you were to look carefully at which pleasures bring you joy and which ones diminish it, I believe you would discover that every enduring pleasure is tied somehow to a relationship that also has a moral commitment. Where relationship is immoral pleasure comes unhinged and eventually withers. A person is not a means to pleasure because their honor must be intact; nonetheless, it is in relationships that joy is anchored.
But the relationships of this life are limited as well. The older we get the more it takes to fill the longing of our hearts for joy unspeakable. And only God is big enough for that.
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Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. “A Slice of Infinity” is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.