Tuesday, April 13, 2021
When you are afraid to indulge or to splurge, someone may say to you, “go on, live a little!” Why do we feel so poorly about doing good things for ourselves, anyway? Sometimes I wonder if I should actually follow this kind of advice, to “live a little.” Giving into a guilty pleasure seems like a positive response to deprivation. But what you’re actually depriving yourself of is the ability to respond to a natural, deeper desire that connects you to better way of living – “living a lot.”
I think there are greater, but less obvious rewards than the pleasures of “living a little.” The indulgence of pleasure loses its luster, when compared to the simple joy of living your true self. Living “a little” implies that the goodness and appeal of the present moment will expire. Living “a little” gives your joy and satisfaction to some ephemeral, external condition. Living “a little” has a shelf life. There will be a point at which you cannot eat one more bite of that rich, chocolate cake you’ve given yourself. The pleasure meters peaks, and it eventually subsides. So “living a little” is indeed, just a little. There is nothing wrong with all of that, but it is shortsighted and it’s short-lived. But living “a lot” is a deeper, more settled and satisfying feeling with who you are, and with what you really want. Living a lot is in doing things for yourself and for others that are intrinsically motivated, not by desire of the five senses, but by the deeper, natural self’s desire. Living a lot is in doing things that feel naturally motivated, not artificially obligated. Living a little only feels like you’re satisfying a deprivation. It’s temporary. Living a lot is living a life rooted in the desires of the soul, not of the mind and/or body. So go ahead and “live a little,” when it’s necessary. But when you’re finished with that – “live a lot.”