Kicks, thrills, fun, pleasure – and joy – Lent 2025: Day 44

What is it to be alive, to experience life rather than not to? The unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness was written into the American constitution in 1776. This is interpreted as the right to seek a better life, one of contentment and well-being...

It's late-1956. I stroll past the Chevrolet dealership; the Chrysler – De Soto dealership is right across the road. I see the 1957 Bel Air in the metal for the first time, and there's the Chrysler Windsor Hardtop or the De Soto Firesweep Sportsman. Which to buy? Excitement. Power. Acceleration. Glinting chrome. Glamorous style. Man, I gotta have one of these babies!

Dames just love 'em! One of these, a ranch-house home, a good job in the defense industry – everything falls into place. This is the pursuit of happiness... 

It's important to distinguish between feelings of well-being. Separate comfort from luxury. Above all, freedom from discomfort and disease (dis-ease). Not being hungry, ill, cold or stressed out. And then what? Fun – that's what! Taking a powerful motorbike out on a winding road in Vermont at dusk!

After the privations of the Great Depression and the Second World War, America in the late 1940s and 1950s was an earthly paradise (assuming of course you were white and male).

I remember Las Vegas in 1978. I was a 20-year-old, keen to (re-) connect with America. The excess was indeed excessive – does the world need a Las Vegas? Did I need to see it? I'd have rather spent more time in small-town America, seeking out rural corners where it still felt like 1952. All gone now...

These days, I treasure the quiet, the calm, the sunny. Not running around seeking kicks. Instead, I seek joy, rather than pleasure. Contentment rather than thrills. Is this just an age thing?

Below: seeing this billboard in Warsaw in 2016 was highly formative to my spiritual worldview. Translated, it reads: "Distinguish joy from pleasure and rejoice too in suffering". Not sure I'm totally on board with the second part of the slogan, but the first part is crucial. 

Asceticism – joy from the simple things, by choice. This I have on a beautiful cloudless day, this I have on days such as today; two walks – one through the wood and back, one to the station and back – and I have it all. No need for a sports car, exotic foreign holidays, fancy clothes or expensive watches.

One you learn to stop boasting (which I must admit I haven't, fully), it all falls into place.

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