I Get To....
Three Words that Bring Instant Pleasure.
This week, Joe and I have been kicking about on Cape Cod celebrating our anniversary. We have been pleasure stacking, adding one delight on top of another. a cosmic gathering with friends, shucking oysters, splashing in a surprisingly warm pond and jumping into the ocean. The phrase, “I get to….” has been on my tongue all week. I get to feel the September sun on my skin. I get to fall asleep to a roaring fire. I get to do this.
Those words remind me of how lucky I am to be alive, in this body of mine, tasting, hearing, feeling, thinking whatever it is that the present moment brings. Those three words amplify an already pleasurable moment by calling in gratitude and dialing up the awe.
It’s easy to do this when life is going the way I want it to go. It’s challenging to do this in the deeps—when our hearts are breaking, when death is around the corner, when wildfires encroach. If we train ourselves in perfect conditions—when the sun is shining and our loved ones are near—this practice will be ready for us when we need it the most.
It may feel counterintuitive, annoying even, to suggest that one might say. “I get to have my heart broken,” or “I get to feel the devastating loss of a loved one,” but this is the human experience. We are finite beings. small ones, at that. The universe is 13.8 billion years old, perhaps even older according to the new Circular Theory, which theoretical physicists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok discuss lucidly in their 2007 book Endless Universe. “According to this theory,” they write, “The Big Bang was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution, each accompanied by the creation of new matter and the formation of new galaxies, stars, and planets.” We may be the centers of our own universes, but our lifespan is infinitely less than the blink of an eye of a fly. Whatever it is we are experiencing, pleasure or pain or everything in between, this too shall pass. For now, we get to experience it.
From the Institute of Pleasure Studies
In the film, Nine Days, a man interviews five unborn souls to determine which one can be given life on Earth. If you want a lovely reminder of the preciousness of life, you can find this film in theaters now. Nine Days premiered at Sundance where screenwriter Edson Oda received the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
Kurosawa's film "Ikiru" asks whether or not it is possible to be totally aware of life as you are living it and examines how the awareness of death can change how we live.
"Goodbye to clocks ticking ... and Mama’s sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths ... and sleeping and waking up,” says Emily in Thornton Wilder's Our Town. She has been given the chance to relive one day of her life. “Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it—every, every minute?"
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