We have been conditioned to believe that pleasure is something we earn.
We earn rest by working hard enough.
We earn celebration by accomplishing something.
We earn ease by being productive.
We earn enjoyment by being “good.”
We earn our right to feel good by first proving that we deserve it.
And eventually, we stop asking ourselves whether we actually feel good at all. We start asking whether we are allowed to.
This is where pleasure gets tangled up with performance.
We begin to measure our experiences by external markers: Did I do enough? Was I productive enough? Did I do it well enough? Did I make the most of it? Was it worth it?
The problem is that performance and presence are fundamentally different things.
Performance asks, “Am I doing this right?”
Presence asks, “What is actually happening here?”
When we are caught up in performance, we lose contact with ourselves. We become more concerned with producing the right outcome than experiencing what is actually happening in our bodies, relationships, and lives.
And this pressure to perform impacts nearly every area of our life.
We turn pleasure into achievement.
We turn rest into recovery for our next period of productivity.
We turn creativity into output.
We turn relationships into something we have to maintain correctly.
We turn our entire existence into a performance of being worthy.
But pleasure was never meant to be proof of our worth.
Pleasure does not have to accomplish anything.
It does not have to make us better.
It does not have to be productive.
It does not have to be deserved.
We are allowed to feel good simply because we are alive.
Feeling good is not a reward for being useful. Pleasure is our birthright.
And I think capitalism has a lot to do with why this is so difficult for us to believe.
There are many ways to experience pleasure and pleasure does not need to be earned.
Pleasure is an important context to explore our inner healing and growth. It brings our Wholeness along: our essence, our emotions, our spirits, our physical bodies.
Pleasure is the playground of creativity, play and imagination, bridging presence, shame, surrender and nearly every expression of our humanity. Here we have the opportunity to intentionally bring together our Inner Child playfulness with our adult selves.
We are vulnerable, loud, open and messy in pleasure, so we can rely on the pressure of performance to stave off the vulnerability of simply feeling good.
The primary problem in relationships is usually not performance but presence. People often say they want to spend more time with their partner but you want to spend more time with your partner doing what? Are they capable of connecting or will spending more time together just highlight your incompatibility?
In relationships particularly, we often get caught up in what we think we want but it is usually not what we need. So be particular with what you do want in a relationship.
Do you actually want more time together or do you want more presence?
Do you actually want your partner to get a higher paying job where they’ll be more miserable or do you want to feel supported in creating security for your family?
Do you actually want more achievement or do you want to feel like your life matters?
Do you actually want to be more productive or do you want to feel good?
We are best able to connect when we are present and attuned.
External markers of achievement get in the way of the presence of pleasure because we contort the situation based on our expectations instead of being present with what is.
The reason we use external markers of achievement as a crutch is because we have been conditioned to measure ourselves through achievement.
We learn to approach life through an achievement orientation instead of presence. We measure ourselves not only by what we accomplish, but by how our accomplishments compare to everyone around us. We begin to measure our experiences according to what they produce, rather than what they give us.
Even the language of performance reflects this conditioning.
We are taught to ask: How well did I do? Was I good enough? Did I accomplish enough? Could I have done more?
And eventually, we stop experiencing our lives and start evaluating them.
When our worth is tied up in our usefulness (whether our usefulness at work or in the bedroom), our self-worth (and identity) become precarious. We became like a plastic bag blowing in the wind because everyone has a different definition of useful. The precariousness of our worth then confirms the worst fear engrained in a capitalistic culture - our disposability. The fear that if we aren’t useful, we aren’t valuable.
We are worthy because we exist. We don’t need to earn our value. Our existence is proof of our worth. Our inherent value is a gift.
Capitalism cannot justify pleasure for the sake of pleasure (which is why we commodify everything we’re interested in). We have to have something to “show” for our pleasure - the same reason we take pictures of our food and snap selfies all along a trip instead of being present with our experience as it is happening. To concretize is to justify the experience. Capitalism requires grounds for non-productive “work” so having orgasm as the goal or notches on the bedpost make it tangible enough to justify.
It is the collaboration of capitalism and the patriarchy that create relationships based in transactionalism - where I use you to get what I want and vice versa. These misplaced expectations inevitability create disappointment. Pleasure connects us to our power centre and these systems of oppression thrive when we externalize (rather than internalize) our authority. To become fully our Selves, we have to reconcile with our pleasure. Our pleasure is good. We can enjoy pleasure for no reason other than it feels good. We are allowed to feel good. We can trust feeling good.
You deserve pleasure with no strings attached. You deserve pleasure because it feels good. You deserve to feel good. Feeling good is your birthright.