Let’s talk about pleasure. And let’s talk about the Values Categories listed on the top of each card. This is the first one that is listed under “Hedonism”, a word which many might be unfamiliar with. You may have noticed that each of the cards we’re talking about have a value “category” on top of the card. There are ten total categories we’ll work our way through, with a varying number of concepts under each.

The Hedonism category contains just three cards and I’ll drop all three explorations today. They’re linked, as all of the Values are. But these in particular seem complex and difficult for me to even hold in my hands, so we’re going to rip this bandaid off together.

Hedonism is defined as “a philosophy holding that pleasure is the highest good and proper aim of human life”. How do we all feel about that?

Personally, I do not hold to this philosophy, as may be evident in some of my previous posts. I certainly don’t feel like the gratification of my own hedonistic desires is the chief aim of humankind. I hope not. But the question is about pleasure. Do I value it? Do you value it?

I’ve already established that I believe that a life in service of others is a life worth living. I ascribe very deeply to that idea. So is this in contradiction to a value for pleasure?

I am a professional pleasure dealer. I roast and sell coffee for a living. A substance with no redeeming qualities beyond pleasure. People like to think of themselves as addicts but in truth, if it all disappeared tomorrow we’d be okay—we really would. We’d rediscover chicory root or black tea, we’d grow our own mint leaves. Here’s my industry secret: Nobody needs this crap. Nobody needs what I sell. Pastries. Lattes. Sugar and spice.

I do it anyway, because it brings small joy to people’s lives.

I’ve written about this before in other forums, so my apologies if this is re-heated information for you. I call it my “kitchen floor moment”. Pithy phrasing, maybe. But it’s a moment I’ve talked about a lot over the years.

In 2013 we opened Chrysalis Coffeehouse, which we later rebranded Flag & Wire Coffee. We were living two counties away from the shop when we opened it. We had what we thought were good reasons for being so far away, but that was my situation. Every morning I’d wake up and silently say goodbye to my sleeping wife, and my three baby children. My eldest would have been about four when we opened our doors.

My wife stayed home with them, changing diapers and wiping up messes and I drove the long road to open the shop at 7am each morning. We had a pathetic revenue picture.

One day in January, (traditionally a pretty slow time of year), I returned home from a day in which we’d done a total of $82 in revenue in the coffee shop. This is not a living.

I entered the house and found my wife crying on the kitchen floor because we were so very poor and so very locked into our situation. I sat down with her and cried myself. We used a point of sale system with an online portal, so my life and business partner could watch intently throughout the day as our numbers didn’t climb.

We sat together on the kitchen floor, certain that we’d made many wrong choices in our lives that brought us to the position we were in. And she asked me this question:

Are you even passionate about coffee anymore?

I was not. But I knew I should be.

The problem I didn’t understand yet is that I’d never been passionate about coffee. Ever. It’s a story for another time, but I didn’t even enter the coffee industry on purpose. It was very much something we backed our way into.

See, there’s not a lot of cash involved in this business, even now many years later. I am a profoundly blessed man, but not exceptionally flush with cash money, honey.

The people who choose this industry generally choose it because of passion for the product and process. And I didn’t, (don’t) care particularly about either. And that seemed at the time like a problem. I did my best for a lot of years to convince myself and others that I had what it took to be passionate about coffee. But I do not.

I confessed, there, on the kitchen floor to my wife, (but mostly to myself), that I wasn’t passionate enough about coffee. But we didn’t have any other options. So it took me a while to realize that it was really the people that I could get on board with. That I could be passionate about.

And people, it turns out, love coffee. It gives them pleasure. And that gives me pleasure. Hedonism at work in my life.

To eat a meal quickly is efficient. To savor the same meal is pleasurable. And we have but one life for sure! It’s impossible to know what comes next and don’t listen too closely to anyone who says otherwise.

I am trained to avoid pleasure for my own self and guard it for others. What’s that about, I wonder?

What if we reframed the word pleasure to “Savoring”. Enjoying. Maintaining. And what if we swapped the word “Hedonism” for “Delight”. Delight yourselves in your one wild and precious life that was made for living.

Service is a part of living. It’s a big part that I have a high value for.

But reflecting on my recent post on Self Respect and Self Doubt, I see that personal maintenance is also key to a life of service. And part of that is pleasure in the end.

The goal I suppose is to live a life and find pleasure where we may, without stepping on others in the process. Can we do it? Can we observe and enjoy pleasurable experiences in our lives without them coming at the expense of the poor or the broken or the marginalized? God, I hope so. If I’m honest I’m still deeply suspicious about pleasure.

Pleasure seems carnal and base. But I think, probably, that’s a piece of my upbringing speaking. I would actually like to explore a value for pleasure and explore the things that delight me. I’m not good at that. Let me think. What do I enjoy? I’ll make a list. Sometimes that’s helpful.

* I enjoy time with my wife. In this season “dates” are few and far between. Time together is something that doesn’t feel productive on some level, but I think it actually is.

* I enjoy spending time with my kids. I can do that often if I’m intentional about it. It gives me great pleasure to watch them grow, to watch them change and grow and develop as genuine humans. When they were young I took great delight in them asking silly questions, in taking them for haircuts, in their little buttcracks hanging out the top of a diaper. Now everything’s so different, and I know I need to continue finding pleasure in who they have become.

* I do enjoy hard work on sunny days. My laziness gets the better of me though, and I spend time indoors instead. Even on a cloudy overcast day, even when it’s chilly and wet outside in my beloved Willamette Valley, if I can break the gravitational pull of my warm chair and go outside I am generally rewarded with rosy cheeks and a reminder that I’m alive.

* I enjoy this values exercise very much. I’m writing these essays and learning so much more about myself with each one. I’m getting a better sense of how I might keep exploring. It gives me great pleasure when I am able to sit with someone while they discover something new about themselves.

* You know what else I love—this one’s kind of a bonus. I love marrying people. Several years ago I got ordained to marry people on the internet. Twice. First I was ordained by the Universal Life Church. After I received my credentials I learned about The Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and got ordained there, too. You’re reading the words of an ordained Spaghetti Minister. Not to brag. I married some good friends of mine who have remained close friends. I spoke from my heart about things that I’d gathered up that mattered to them, and it was, (for me) a deeply meaningful experience with thier friends and family in the hills. I love them. I love their parents, and now I love their children. They’re a source of pleasure for me.

A couple of years later an employee, nay, a friend of mine asked me to marry he & his fiance. We went quietly, just about ten of us to a meadow in the Ash Trees and I said the kindest things I could come up with and at the end they were married. I love marriage. I love commitment between two people. It’s a beautiful choice and it’s a deep honor to be a witness to it.

Tell me what you value about pleasure. The next few cards all have “Hedonism” printed atop them. This should be an interesting experience.

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