It Doesn’t Need to Mean Anything

And Pleasure Doesn't Have to Feel Pleasurable

At least a few days a week, I like to sit quietly with a cup of coffee and write in my journal. Sometimes a topic comes quickly and naturally. Other times, I ask an AI for a prompt. Monday morning was one of those days.

Unlike most of the prompts it offers, this one seemed rather lighthearted. Easy.

Or at least that's how it started.

"What do I genuinely enjoy that doesn’t need to mean anything?"

My answers came easily and quickly:

"Music, particularly music with a blues influence, jazz, and occasionally classical.

"Hiking with friends, particularly multiday hikes and backpacking.

"Learning new things: neuroscience, consciousness, psychology, the universe, some science and physics, as long as no math is required.

"Writing. Maybe not the actual act of typing words, but the act of distilling thoughts and emotions into words that capture and convey those feelings and thoughts.

"Conversations with friends, particularly conversations with some substance.

"Spending time with family. And, of course, Skye.

"Comedy: movies, shows, whatever makes me laugh.

"Reading, which I will distinguish from learning. In this case, I mean fiction or memoirs.

"And I will add spiritual exploration, whether through self-reflection, meditation, reading, or discussions with others.

"It was by no means a complete list, nor was it in any particular order. It was simply a stream of consciousness, which is typical of my journal ramblings."

Then I found myself expanding on, or perhaps qualifying, the items on the list.

"I'm not sure I've captured the complete list, and I know it isn't in order of preference or level of enjoyment. I'm pretty certain all of that changes depending on context. For example, I love music, and when left alone at home for several days, music is constantly playing. But, there comes a point when I want quiet. Learning is a constant theme, but sometimes I want the escape of a novel or music."

But I didn't stop there.

"Maybe the thing I crave is diversity of experience, which I could argue is at the heart of my interest in learning. For that matter, learning becomes a byproduct of nearly everything on that list. Learning does feel central to life, and it is learning, I believe, that deepens relationships with others."

Then I started to slip off the edge a bit.

"I grew up in a life that was in constant motion. Maybe that is true, in some form, for everyone. In my case, it meant new places, new people, new experiences. Even a new language, such as when I lived in Italy. A life in motion is one that seems to facilitate learning. So maybe one thing about the stable life I live these days, and the sense that it isn't going to change anytime in the foreseeable future, is that I feel a need to be more deliberate about learning new things. Or maybe it is simply that without a career, which forces specific job-related learning, I feel stagnant. Maybe that accentuates the sense of a lack of motion."

When I finished, I read back over what I'd written and had to laugh. The prompt I'd been responding to ended with the phrase, "...that doesn’t need to mean anything."

I seemed to have missed that part.

I stared at the page for a long moment, wondering why it had been so hard to answer the question as asked.

I was just adding context, I thought. Isn't that what a journal entry is all about?

Maybe. But I couldn't shake the question: What do I enjoy simply because I enjoy it, and why do I feel the need to make it mean something?

I genuinely find pleasure in all of the things I listed in that journal entry. While they do, in some cases, offer "meaning" in my life, I'm not convinced that's the reason I enjoy them.

We are wonderfully complex creatures, and I don't believe anything we do is as simple as, "I just like it." The whole concept of what we like, or what provides enjoyment, is wrapped up in a lifetime of experience.

I used to fly a plane and loved it, although when the unexpected happened, it could be frightening. Maybe what I enjoyed more than the act of flying was how alive it made me feel. Or maybe it was the problem-solving that is nearly constant when flying: navigating, managing the engine, communicating with ATC, all while carrying on a conversation with the person in the seat next to me. The same was true of riding a motorcycle or skiing. I loved the challenge of all three, even when that challenge came with moments of fear. As I think back on those days, what I see so clearly now is that it was that combination of challenge and fear that gave me that feeling of being alive.

The interesting lesson in that is that what brings us enjoyment is far more complex than simply, "I like that."

So perhaps the question isn't, "Why is it so difficult for me to simply enjoy something without making it mean something?"

I think the better question might be: Why does meaning provide pleasure?

Now that is a whole different question, and I'm not sure I can even begin to understand it with any level of fidelity.

What I do know is that all of the experiences on my list stir something in me. An emotion I find interesting or pleasing. Something I want more of, so I pursue it further.

Take music. The more I am exposed to different genres and artists, the broader my tastes become. And there is little doubt that some of the enjoyment comes from stirring emotion, even if that emotion is sadness. The act of allowing myself to feel can be pleasurable, even when the feeling itself isn't.

Odd as that seems, it somehow feels true.

The answer may lie in the meaning the emotion carries for us. When I think back to the loss of my brother or my parents, those were incredibly sad and painful times. With time, though, I began to see that the sadness existed because of the love I felt for them. It's hard to feel sadness over the loss of something you don't care about.

So when a song stirs a profoundly sad emotion within me, I am drawn to it. Not because I am drawn to pain, my time in the Marine Corps aside. I'm drawn to it because it touches something beneath the pain. What the loss represents. The love. The connection.

Because loss, by its very nature, reminds us that something mattered.

Hence the pleasure.

So maybe the simplest and truest lesson from Monday's journal entry is this:

What enjoyment is there without meaning?