Frigg's Day

The duties of pleasure
Could I be so bold as to suggest that there are some things men are more likely to grasp than women? I know, I know but it is commonplace to suggest that there are things that women grasp more readily than men so why not? I'm not suggesting that women or men are inherently weaker or all incapable in some areas, just that there are some things that members of one sex are more likely to grasp than the other.

And one of these is that life's pleasures and joys come with duties attached. Or, to be more precise, you can't really enjoy your pleasure unless you understand that it is a duty.

This, of course, runs against what all the self-help books say. They say, "Don't make your new hobby, your diet or your musical skill an obligation or else you'll never do it." Do this and you will come to resent whatever the thing is and drop it. So only do it as pleasure they say.

Or, there is this observation from Laura Kipnis about love and marriage:

Yes, we all know that Good Marriages Take Work: we've been well-tutored in the catechism of labor-intensive intimacy. Work, work, work: given all the heavy lifting required, what's the difference between work and "after work" again? Work/home, office/bedroom: are you ever not on the clock? Good relationships may take work, but unfortunately, when it comes to love, trying is always trying too hard: work doesn't work.

I don't want to claim that Kipnis represents all women but you don't have to read a lot of women's magazines to find claims a lot like that. 

Plain common sense ought to be enough to tell us that the exact opposite is true. Because your life is full of obligations and if your pleasures aren't on that list then they will get displaced. Play is the thing you do when work is done. You find yourself at the end of the day too tired to make love, do your scrapbook or sing your scales. As you decide not to do them just this once; you tell yourself that today is an exception. But it won't be. Every single day you'll make your to do list—whether on paper or in just your head—and your pleasures will not be on it.

And one day you'll find that your entire life has gone by without your doing the things you really wanted to do.

Or you'll convince yourself that the grapes were sour. "If I'd really wanted to finish that quilt, I would have. The fact that I left it half-finished for a decade only proves that I never wanted to do it in the first place." This is first class nonsense but is perhaps comforting as you put the half-finished quilt into a box you know it will never come out of.

Look at anyone who is really good at anything and you'll see someone who has made a duty of their desires. No matter how many times the "easy" piano book promises you that you can learn without boring scales and exercises, the truth is that Martha Argerich practiced her scales and exercises every single day. She practiced so hard that she was left drained.

The more important thing to get is this: you yourself shape and create your pleasures and desires. It may seem to us that we just love some kinds of things and not others but the truth is that it took years to train ourselves to want what we want. If I could make a crude male observation, when I look at women I do make a series of judgments and one of them is always "does she know how to want?". For a lot of women don't.

I've hit the point in life where I've seen a few marriages fail. One of the most dependable signs that one of your friends' marriages is in trouble is when the wife values her children more than her husband. It happens all the time. It happens, of course, because loving children is an obligation. The child is your child and you show love even when you damn well don't feel like it. That, of course, is absolutely right. It is what we should do and I'm not suggesting otherwise.

The problem is on the other side and I've watched more than a few women (and some men) I know do this. For the things and people you love out of your desires, on the other hand, are not obligations and you can easily convince yourself that it is better to give yourself to these things only when you feel like it.

But, you know, Martha Argerich didn't get to be the genius she is despite the boring scales and exercises she had to do every day. She came to love the piano more and more precisely because she played those scales and exercises every day. It was the huge investment of time and work that made the love. The same thing happens with children. Parents come to love their children more and more because of the effort they put into them. Meanwhile the thing that is supposed to be fun slowly dwindles precisely because no investment is put into it.

Anything really worth loving will be something that takes effort, work and sacrifice to love.