Pleasure

I guess waiting a year and three months between posts is a bit much, but I've been blog-resistant, for some reason.

However, I need to get my creative juices flowing, so what better way then a bit of self-indulgent writing in the blogosphere?

I am reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. I was with her all the way in Italy, but I'm a bit bogged down in India. Hopefully I can slog through to Indonesia, for some love.

What sticks with me from the book was her desire for pleasure in Italy, and how Italians welcomed and embraced that idea. It's very unAmerican in a lot of ways to openly seek pleasure, to relish pleasure, to enjoy pleasure. Hell, we invented "guilty pleasure"! But if you believe, as I do, that life is for living, and not just for trudging through and meeting your responsibilities, then why don't we go looking for pleasure more openly?

I'm not suggesting that we should quit our jobs or neglect our children, but why not embrace, as the Italians apparently do, the idea that we should hunt for pleasure, and when we find it, rejoice? After all, isn't one cookie, nibbled slowly and savored, worth much more than a whole box hastily eaten before anyone comes home?

I am going to experiment with pleasure -- looking for it, enjoying it, and celebrating it. I am going to BRAG about my pleasures. Nothing to be ashamed of -- because why should I be? Has the American "work ethic" deprived us of all ability to admit that we want to have fun in our lives? I hope not -- and now, I'm going to enjoy a good book and a little nap, even though this activity will NOT add in any way to the GNP.