The cost of pleasure

Work has offered the opportunity to talk with a therapist of some kind concerning well-being in the workplace and I had my first session today. I have never had any kind of therapy in the past (though am probably a good candidate) and didn't really know what to expect in detail, but it was still pretty much as expected. I am not sure whether it will help or not, but it is an interesting new experience to think about and perhaps it will give me some ideas on how to better cope with my self-imposed conditions.

One thing I did "reveal" about myself is that I favor work far more than enjoyment and while I recognize the need for both, I tend to favor the work side of the equation, rather than the pleasure - the should do instead of the want to do. There is a reason I weigh it this way, as due to the nature of wants, it is very easy to keep pushing the line more towards wants and away from the shoulds.

One issue I find is that while we are encouraged to live in the moment, that doesn't mean that we have to always enjoy the moments. Every movement has an opportunity cost as it burns some resources in one area, taking away the capabilities in another. But, this direct line isn't the only cost, as expenditure of resources now will also have an effect on future resources, with some being reductive and others being generative. On average, we are probably looking to have more opportunity in he future, but spending our efforts poorly now can reduce the range that we will have later.

This is easy to illustrate in regards to investments, where for example a 100 dollars spent on stocks will have more potential for future value than 100 dollars spent on candy. Both purchases are consuming the same monetary resources, but the return on the expenditure is moving in different directions. The problem is that buying the stocks doesn't have the same hit of pleasure (personal value) for most people as consuming the candy - so, people go with the want over the should.

"Should" itself is obviously a loaded word in this case, as what we should and shouldn't do it up to us. However, I know quite a lot of people who feel that the "should" of living in the moment means to take the, You Only Live Once where "I could be hit by a bus tomorrow" approach, so that resources are more likely consumed for pleasure, without recognizing that statistically, we are all likely to live until we are in our eighties.

Spending resources on non-generative consumption is going to reduce potential resources in the future and the problem with feeding our wants now can mean that we won't be able to feed our wants later. This is why that line between Pleasure and Pain is so fine, for as I see it, too much momentary pleasure is going to become possible future pain in one way or another. It is essentially weighing up what we value in life today in comparison to what we expect to value in life in the future and due to the way our minds work in regards to investment and potential, the future loses out to the present.

Favoring resource expenditure on the now too heavily, will see a potential lack of resources in the future, meaning getting what one wants today, struggling to survive tomorrow - what we are actually doing is borrowing from our own future and if the habit is persistent, we will never be able to pay it back and will increasingly lose access to being able to satisfy our wants, meaning that we will continually get what we want until we can get nothing we want. This forces us into a continual cycle of compromise where we have to keep reducing our satisfaction through belt-tightening. This can be painful.

Of course, there is a line where favoring the should do and ignoring the want to do will have its own costs, but I think that we are somewhat hardwired to do what feels good, without necessarily seeing or feeling the diminishing returns in what we are doing. This means that we can end up burning resources that could go into the should do side needlessly, as we aren't even getting the momentary pleasure from the expenditure. For me, I noticed this in my gaming back in the day, where I kept playing and even felt like playing, even though I wasn't really enjoying the playing. I suspect that a lot of social media time is spent in the same way - mindlessly scrolling out of habit and dopamine hit.

I think life itself tends to fractal in a repetitive fashion, so that lessons from one sector can be applied to another, especially when it comes to our psychological behaviors. This means that exploring the way the mind works in one area can give us indications on how to improve in another. After being on Hive and using my writing as a way to process my own mental conditioning and potential, I see a lot of cross over between how my mental habits influence my investment approach. Improving the way I categorize and spend my resources has changed my perceptions of what is valuable and as a result, changed the way I behave toward the current moment and the future.

My fault in this is that I am quite aware of that line between the want and the should and perhaps spend too much time doing what I should, instead of what I want. Of course, the should isn't forced, meaning that it is a type of want also, it is just that the timeframe for gratification is longer than the present moment. I was charged with adding three points to focus on as outcomes from these sessions and other than adding an hour of sleep per night where I can find it, I still have o find another two. I am guessing one of these will have to be to include a little more "want satisfaction" in my life and forgo a little bit of the should. This is difficult to do for me as it is kind of like selling now, knowing that the future price is going to be higher -which means that if I am going to sell, I better really want what I am going to buy with the proceeds.

Some people sell all they have to satisfy their current wants - but what happens when there is nothing left to sell?

I don't want to be in a constant position of having to earn to survive, which means investing myself now so that I can own to live. There is risk in investing and a risk in ownership, but I consider that most of us in life will suffer far more pain if we choose to own nothing, but keeping wanting something. But what we should do and what we do, can be very different things.

Taraz [ Gen1: Hive ]

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