Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Jean.
You can have dessert once you finish your squash.
It’s weird how much of the pleasures of life we put “after” something else had to be done. And we wonder why so many walk around with a feeling like they don’t “deserve” to be happy. If dessert comes after ____, if our hearts desire gets to be after we ____, then by God we can’t allow ourselves to be happy NOW… or else maybe someone will put an obstacle in the way.
Or we will.
It’s not that delayed gratification is bad.
Being able to wait to enjoy dessert until the main course is complete, or wait to eat the chocolate chip cookies over time rather than gobble them all down in 5 minutes… this is a good skill.
But it feels to me that in our Outcome Orientation our culture has had, we forget the journey and its pleasures, we will even suffer through ____ in order just to get to ____.
What happens when we’re freed?
For a lot of us, there’s this intense need to reprogram our awareness, to become more NOW and Present. To put less energy into the “happy when” and Be Happy Now.
For others, well, now that someone isn’t there to stop them from eating dessert before the main course, there’s an imbalance of seeking ONLY desserts, that it’s all about getting straight to the outcome–if we can. While it’s perhaps unwise to make “unpleasant before pleasant” the patterned behavior of home and school and work (TGIF!!), the downsides of that going away without another real skill to replace it is… well, a lot of addiction.
Simple uplifts that let us enjoy happiness potions in our body are, I believe, a more vital skill for thriving than being able to slog through food we don’t want to get ice cream or a week of work to get a paycheck and a weekend.
Ahhh… thank you for giving us something to chew on, Jean! You embody the kind of real-human wisdom that is so so Useful for our emotional world. 