The pleasure vs the joy

There is an enormous difference between the pleasure and the joy.

● PLEASURE

You can find pleasure everywhere, anytime and I certainly never had any problem with that. You can even buy many pleasures with money and those who know nothing about joy – believe it is what they want. The money. So they can get the pleasure. Buy the pleasure with it. Nothing wrong with that! But – the problem is if you can’t buy yourself enough pleasures you’re going to chase the money. And if you have the money – you’ll soon realise it’s not enough because you weren’t searching for that. Pleasure lasts long as it takes you to have that one bite of a chocolate piece and to get to it – it takes days, months or years.

Being somewhere in the middle is the worst. It is doubtful and shaking perspective leaving you many choices to invest your time and energy into many wrong battles. If you don’t have enough – how are you going to realise you don’t need it at all?

Not having any choices – or being poor with no prospects of changing that – is a slightly better position. You’ll be forced to find the joy! (Although you might not. You might end up being resentful and jealous and envy is the opposite side of the joy! And that mostly depends on a social pressure and surroundings.)

● JOY

Joy is the pure sweetness of existence. You can’t buy it. You can’t fake it. You can’t find it if you don’t love your own being.

Some examples of joy:

~Joy in the morning. When you wake up with the overwhelming thought “It’s so good to breathe!”

~Or before you go to sleep and some sweetness jiggles you all around your body and you surrender to it.

~You can find it on the bus. When you suddenly feel the connection with all these people you see and you somehow smile from the inside and realise somebody else is doing it too.

~You can find it in an acceptance and peace when things go wrong and you don’t feel threatened at all. You remain silent.

~It’s also in a connection with the trees or the ocean or the sand. For instance …

You feel the sand on the soles of your feet and get a glimpse of the gratitude for you’ve been gifted to experience the structure of the sand. You touch the leaf and fall in love with your own fingers for the joy that you felt using them. You suddenly realise how beautiful it is to be the human. That’s joy (to me). And then. I stop. I stop to think.

Moment freezes, the air is sweet and it smells like being free. No thoughts.

I still don’t know what exactly love is (in terms of pleasure vs joy) nor what’s that feeling that music gives me. Pleasure or the joy? I think both are probably the pleasure. Maybe some pure kinds of (wild! If it’s not wild it can’t be pure) LOVE are having their roots in joy but since both music and love produce attachment I can’t really be sure.

Maybe it changes from the moment to moment. From day to day, from song to song. The way you approach either a person you love, or the music you are creating or listening to…. the difference is probably in the approach. In you.

Joy is some kind of an unattached form of pleasure. Pleasure is always attached to something or someone. Tough way.

Joy is when you move from your own (and everybody else’s) way.
Pleasure is trying to find the path that feels good and the fear to step away from it. (Even for a risk to get more pleasure!)

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That’s why I picked Asia as the first step of my journey. To avoid the known form of pleasure (to me). To learn to know the real boundaries of my being and its joy when it’s unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

All pictures were taken by me in Indonesia (on Gili Meno & Gili Air) islands near Lombok & Bali. Written 16 November 2016. Published a year later.