Take Your Pleasure
what to do in times like this
Dear Ones,
I think it is safe to say that we are all on edge. We have been getting a daily injection of fear for years now. Fear accumulates in the body, it changes the way we think, which changes how we act. It makes it hard to breathe and it makes it hard to imagine the world that we want to live in. Fear does not have to be in the driver’s seat. But that requires a commitment to something else. Something bigger, greater, more appealing than fear.
For the past several years, I have been researching resilience and joy. And that lead me to a revolutionary personal and political act that I didn’t expect to find: Pleasure.
It is bold to be writing to you today, this historic moment when everything is on the line, about pleasure. But I have been learning to be bold, to speak and write the truth, to ruffle feathers and take a few arrows in my back. It’s what is needed at this time. For me, for all of us. Let us step into our biggest selves and create the world we want to live in. One action at a time. Together.
In a few weeks, I will be launching The Pleasure Report. It will be filled with interviews, essays, reviews, short films and audio, and illustrations about leaning into life with acceptance, attention and awareness. We will be exploring how to be in our bodies, to feel everything, to become sensitized. Because our nervous systems are shot and it is time to master our own pleasure. Because this is the kind of news we need for a new chapter. We begin our first issue with The Truth because truth and pleasure travel together. There is no pleasure without truth. It doesn’t mean that the truth feels good. It rarely does. But it is exhilarating.
I have been interviewing teachers, activists, deep divers of the senses and cartographers of the mind and body. From neuroscientists to conflict negotiators, political prisoners to a 104 year-old s3x therapist, I look forward to bringing you stories, questions about our human bodies and our lived experiences. Under all of this work is the question: who are we without the constraints of our current culture?
For now, I leave you with a few things I have learned.
Pleasure is a choice. One that we must choose every day. It doesn’t just sustain us as water does a plant. It is our sunshine. We need it. A life without pleasure is survival.
I invite you to lean into your pleasure today, whatever that looks like to you. Call friends, go for a walk, join a dance party, play music, take a bath, love up your loved ones, love up yourself, make something beautiful. Do something just for you.
And vote.
And then make sure three friends have voted.
If you are interested in joining me on this adventure, you can sign up for the Pleasure Report here.
I leave you with a few resources for today and this week and I look forward to being in touch on the regular.
Sue Jaye Johnson
/ The Pleasure Report
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I have come to believe that facts, guilt, and shame are limited motivations for creating change, even though those are the primary forces we use in our organizing work. I suspect that to really transform our society, we will need to make justice one of the most pleasurable experiences we can have. — Adrienne Brown
