Epicurus advocates enjoying the daily pleasures that life presents. That requires being present for those pleasure and not becoming preoccupied by absent pleasures.
I mention this idea in the long post on my diet — how some who choose a plant-based diet become preoccupied with the foods they’re not eating (the steaks, ribs, roasts, sausage, duck breast, scrambled eggs, triple-cream cheese, and so on) to the extent that they fail to focus on the pleasures of the food they are eating. Their focus is on denial (no meat! no dairy! no eggs!) and not on the new direction they’ve taken. I wrote:
How to be happy with your diet
Look at the variety of whole plant-based foods and the meals you can make with them. If you focus your attention on what you can/should eat and not dwell on what you can’t (or shouldn’t) eat, you’ll feel much more satisfied with your lot. If you constantly obsess about foods you should avoid, you’ll make yourself unhappy and undermine your will to eat well. I mention this because it seems that people have a tendency to focus on what they lack and not on what they have. (“We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.” – from To a Skylark, by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)
This is a specific example of a more general situation — namely, whenever you choose a direction you necessarily must forsake other directions.
The Road Not Taken – by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Having chosen a path, an Epicurean will enjoy the pleasure of that path and not fret about what s/he has missed from all other possible paths. Whatever you do and whatever you have, you can think of myriads of things you aren’t doing and don’t have. Do not let yourself become attached to those absences.
For example, if you choose a whole-food plant-based diet, do not consider it as rejecting meat, dairy, and eggs (the negative view, which focuses on the path abandoned), but rather look for the pleasures of the path now chosen.
More generally, we necessarily move from one day to next and from one season to the next. We are always moving on, changing, and (hopefully) growing in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. That growth suggests a path that constantly presents new vistas and new choices. Each stage along the way is an abandonment of the previous stage. One can focus on the loss of the previous stage or look for the pleasures the new stage brings. If you follow Epicurus, it is obvious that you should enjoy the pleasures.
I mention this in Leisureguy’s Guide to Gourmet Shaving:
I realized recently that this book might have been more accurately titled The Epicure’s Guide to Shaving, for Epicurus[i] would surely approve making necessary tasks enjoyable. He thought that chance encounters of atoms falling through the void, randomly interacting, produced — after much time — us and the world in which we live. In his view we cease to exist when we die, while the atoms of our body continue to tumble along through time and space.
Because Epicurus believed that life is a one-shot deal, he made enjoying life a high priority. A dissolute lifestyle tends to have highly unpleasant consequences, so it makes sense to seek enjoyment first in the small things of life, which is what we mostly encounter day to day. Learning new ideas and mastering new skills are examples of activities that provide enjoyment without harm.
Take, as a random example, the morning shave: an Epicurean who shaves will seek a way to derive enjoyment from the task: to spend his (limited) time doing things he doesn’t enjoy makes no sense when he could instead do them enjoyably. Moreover, an enjoyable task requires little willpower: you are drawn to the task rather than having to push yourself. Indeed, a task can even be restorative and energizing; rather than draining you, a task approached properly can provide both enjoyment and a satisfying sense of fulfillment.
The psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi wrote several books on a mental state he termed “flow”: a focused, absorbing, satisfying involvement in what is happening in the moment[ii]. So another way to state the Epicurean position is that one should arrange his or her life to maximize the opportunities for flow to occur. Flow is a mental experience, so introspection combined with an attitude that encourages the enjoyment of small things—to look for joy, and to think about how to find more occasions of joy—is an obvious step.
This book is my contribution to an Epicurean lifestyle: the book offers a way to make a necessary chore enjoyable. But don’t stop just at shaving.
[i] Epicurus: See Catherine Wilson’s book and (of course) his own writings, and there’s also the Wikipedia entry on Epicurus.
[ii] Mihály Csíkszentmihályi: See the Wikipedia article on flow. Each person can find activities appropriate for him or her that will promote flow: rock climbing, painting or drawing, gardening, cooking, playing a musical instrument, and the like. Csíkszentmihályi defined the term in his studies and in the fascinating book that emerged from them, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.
This is why I see as wrong-headed the effort by some who take up a plant-based diet to focus on trying to mimic the foods left behind: seeking imitation bacon, imitation sausage, imitation roast, imitation burgers, imitation cheese. Those strike me as distractions that prevent appreciation of the new vistas that the new direction offers. That approach amounts to looking back at the past and longing for it.
The Chambered Nautilus – by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,—
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathèd horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:—Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
To cling to your current mansion and fear to abandon it prevents means you will not encounter (nor appreciate) new pleasures. It’s bad enough when this fear means one fails to appreciate the pleasures of a new dietary direction, but such fears can cost more: they can imprison one in a life of misery because their focus is totally on what would be lost by moving on. Consider, for example, a terrible marriage in which two remain together only because each fears the loss of wealth and possessions (the house, the lifestyle, the cars, …). Their wealth and possessions are a prison, and they remain in their current chamber of misery, never moving to a dome more vast. They view taking a new path only as the loss of the old path, and they cannot see the possibility of pleasures that lie unseen ahead.
Epicurus would, I think, see this as a tragedy. They have but one life, and to remain stuck in a miserable situation, never considering the joys that could await them in a new stage, always clinging to what they now have, holding back from moving on: that enacts a terrible price.
Rabbi Ben Ezra – by Robert Browning
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!”
That’s but the first stanza of a long poem. It presents a two-chambered version of the nautilus: youth and old age. Don’t cling to youth, for it must pass. Enjoy the pleasures of a fuller experience.
Those who fear change do not grow, for growth is change. They fear to leave the mansions of the past to see what pleasures lie ahead — they cannot make this leap of faith. If your attention is totally taken by what was, potential new pleasures pass by unobserved and unexperienced.
So if you choose a whole-food plant-based diet, embrace it. See where it takes you. Explore the new mansion.
Update: This morning another poem occurred to me on somewhat the same theme — a theme that seems to appeal to poets because being distracted from what is here now before one by pining for what is not is a common human (and uniquely human) condition. Here’s the poem:
Maud Muller – by John Greenleaf Whittier
Maud Muller, on a summer’s day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.But when she glanced to the far-off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast,—A wish that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees to greet the maid,And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow across the road.She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.“Thanks!” said the Judge; “a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.And Maud forgot her brier-torn gown
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!
That I the Judge’s bride might be!“He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door.”The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.“A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.“And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.“Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,“But low of cattle and song of birds,
And health and quiet and loving words.”But he thought of his sisters proud and cold,
And his mother vain of her rank and gold.So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.Oft, when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
“Ah, that I were free again!“Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.But care and sorrow, and childbirth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new-mown hay in the meadow lot,And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein.And, gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;The weary wheel to a spinet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned,And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, “It might have been.”Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall.For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!
