As Americans, we have a tendency to rate enjoyment by how much it costs, when in reality cost has little to do with the sensory feeling that comes from engaging in a pleasurable activity.
If high costs make activities more pleasurable, then only the richest of us would be able to enjoy them. But that's not true, because as I look back at the times I felt some of the highest amount of pleasure, the costs of those experiences were minimal or free.
Do you really believe paying $250,000 to be blasted into orbit around the earth gives a person a more pleasurable experience than when I watched my 7-year old granddaughter pull in a two-pound bass from our backyard pond? Of course not.
We all have memories that stick with us, and if the cost of the experiences is the only factor, then the time our family took the Concord from London to New York should rack up there with one of our most pleasurable experiences. But it wasn't. Oh, it was interesting, but after an hour or so it was just another plane ride, just a lot more expensive.
I have more warm thoughts as I think about paddling and fishing along Champagnolle Creek in an old wooden boat rented for $2, easing between huge cypress trees, smiling while watching a couple of wood ducks take wing. Or the pleasure I felt after a morning of trying to teach my son to ride a bike, and then finally ..."Vertis! Look, there he goes!" You can't create that with money.
While doing something small is important for personal enjoyment, another way to have a pleasurable experience is doing for others. We can all recall the gift or good deed we did for someone else. Sometimes the most expensive Christmas presents elicit barely a yawn, when a gift that cost a fraction of that brings the receiver joy. When our daughter was 10 we gave her an inexpensive rabbit fur jacket. She was so happy that she cried. That's priceless.
Or the other morning, with 10-plus inches of snow on the ground that meant I couldn't get my big heavy Lincoln Navigator off the turnaround where we could go to the store. After two cups of coffee, I looked outside on our snow- and ice-covered deck where I had put birdseed the day before.
The birds were everywhere, and the little birdseed that was left was under several inches of new ice and sleet. So Vertis and I cleaned out the cabinets and with old bread and some cooked rice from the previous night's dinner, we came up with a large Tupperware container full of homemade birdseed. The birds loved it, and as they flocked to have breakfast, we smiled.
All of us can think back on dozens of little giving incidents. Life is not what some cynical individuals think: "When you die, the person with the most toys wins."
A pleasurable life can mean just being there and responding. When we were living in Portland, Texas, a bedroom community of Corpus Christi, we took a direct hit from hurricane Celia. The eye of the storm came right over Portland, with 20 minutes of dead calm following 180 mile-per-hour winds, followed by another blast of 180-mph winds from the opposite direction.
Our subdivision was on Corpus Christi Bay and took the full force of the wind. Insurance companies surveying the damage said over 30 percent of the homes in Portland had a 100 percent damage claim.
We were in the middle of a north-south street in a one-story house with two-story houses on both sides. Those houses lost their entire roofs. We had almost no damage. That night, 22 people spent the night in our house, and we welcomed them in.
I look back on that experience with a warm feeling, because we were there when a need arose, and we responded. If helping your neighbors who are in need doesn't give you pleasure, you need to reset your pleasure button.
We must realize that what gives each of us pleasure can be radically different, even someone who we are very close to, and when we acquiesce to that person's desires, it is almost like directly having the pleasure ourselves. If your significant other enjoys something that you barely tolerate, and if you really have unselfish love for that person, you will share in the pleasure.
As I am writing this column, Vertis has the TV on, and an interviewer has Mattress Mack from Houston on the show. Mattress Mack, who owns two large furniture stores in the city, has a reputation for opening his stores during catastrophic events, and when these winter storms crippled the utilities and people in Houston were cold and in the dark, he welcomed over 300 people in.
What's remarkable is the expression on Mattress Mack's face. He is as happy about sharing his stores with needy neighbors as if he had just won the lottery.
If we will add to the small bits of life which cost very little, and mix in a helping hand to neighbors in need and enjoy the pleasures your loved ones enjoy, we will be rewarded with abundant pleasures.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.