Saw this on a freaking placemat while grabbing lunch downtown with a classmate to do a certain amount of studying which never got done. Despite sounding initially like more self-help horseshit, there's a tone to the writing and helpful kind of forgiveness in the delivery that sets it apart from ah, say, crap like The Alchemist.
It's also very much the opposite of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129, itself my favorite of those few I know, yet also cribs a few rythms from it. Only difference is that while Shakespeare is talking about all the trouble and pain that comes from us seeking pleasure, Gibran is understanding of these needs that make us human and embraces them, but suggests that there's also so many more pleasures in life.
Such as, oh, say, shooting heroin while jumping out of a plane naked.
Or seeing a great friend in a place that you usually are but they're usually not. Or waking up to the sound of almost-ready bacon popping on a morning where it just snowed. Or watching a sunset on a warm summer Friday evening with a gin & tonic while a small plane slowly buzzes by. Or hearing your name mentioned on the radio in reference to a request you made to play "Don't Fear The Reaper". Or someone you adore sleeping next to you in the car at night while you drive. Or a cool glass of water when you're very, very thirsty.
Human pleasures are many, and can't all be completed simultaneously ("stacked"? surely there must be a really good board game in this idea). But if there's more to life than any of them I'm not sure I care. Yet.
On Pleasure
Kahlil Gibran
Then a hermit, who visited the city once a year, came forth and said, "Speak to us of Pleasure." And he answered, saying: Pleasure is a freedom-song, but it is not freedom. It is the blossoming of your desires, but it is not their fruit. It is a depth calling unto a height, But it is not the deep nor the high. It is the caged taking wing, But it is not space encompassed. Ay, in very truth, pleasure is a freedomsong. And I fain would have you sing it with fullness of heart; yet I would not have you lose your hearts in the singing.
Some of your youth seek pleasure as if it were all, and they are judged and rebuked. I would not judge nor rebuke them. I would have them seek. For they shall find pleasure, but not her alone. Seven are her sisters, and the least of them is more beautiful than pleasure. Have you not heard of the man who was digging in the earth for roots and found a treasure?
And some of your elders remember pleasures with regret like wrongs committed in drunkenness. But regret is the beclouding of the mind and not its chastisement. They should remember their pleasures with gratitude, as they would the harvest of a summer. Yet if it comforts them to regret, let them be comforted.
And there are among you those who are neither young to seek nor old to remember; and in their fear of seeking and remembering they shun all pleasures, lest they neglect the spirit or offend against it. But even in their foregoing is their pleasure. And thus they too find a treasure though they dig for roots with quivering hands. But tell me, who is he that can offend the spirit? Shall the nightingale offend the stillness of the night, or the firefly the stars? And shall your flame or your smoke burden the wind? Think you the spirit is a still pool which you can trouble with a staff?
Oftentimes in denying yourself pleasure you do but store the desire in the recesses of your being. Who knows but that which seems omitted today, waits for tomorrow? Even your body knows its heritage and its rightful need and will not be deceived. And your body is the harp of your soul, and it is yours to bring forth sweet music from it or confused sounds.
And now you ask in your heart, "How shall we distinguish that which is good in pleasure from that which is not good?" Go to your fields and your gardens, and you shall learn that it is the pleasure of the bee to gather honey of the flower, but it is also the pleasure of the flower to yield its honey to the bee. For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life, and to the flower a bee is a messenger of love, and to both, bee and flower, the giving and the receiving of pleasure is a need and an ecstasy.
People of Orphalese, be in your pleasures like the flowers and the bees.
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