Don't Chase Fireworks

In her poem “No Explosions,” Naomi Shihab Nye writes:

To enjoy fireworks you would have to have lived a different kind of life.

Whether or not you like fireworks (I actually do), this poem makes me think about all the ways we seek pleasure in things our bodies don’t actually enjoy.

We pursue people we find exciting, though our stomachs feel tight and tense around them. We fill a vacation with adventures, only to find that what feels best is just sitting under a tree. We chase the fireworks of attention, only to find our nervous systems exhausted.

It’s not our fault. We never received an education in pleasure. Ads taught us what to like, but very few of us were taught how to pay attention to pleasure itself: how it shows up in our bodies, what deepens it, what diminishes it, and when we’ve stopped enjoying something and started chasing its shadow.

One of the Buddha’s great insights is that the deepest pleasure isn’t something you consume. It’s something already present in your body that you tune into, like a radio. Make your life a little quieter and pay attention to the subtle energies in your breath and body, and with practice, you can find a kind of pleasure that is steady and truly satisfying.

The truth is: though we drown in a sea of delights, when it comes to true pleasure, we’re more like people dying of thirst. That’s because pleasure is less about attaining an external object and more about opening to truths held in your body — truths that may contradict your self-image. Pleasure, in this sense, is a form of self-knowledge.

Maybe you don’t actually enjoy some of those parties. Maybe the praise you’re seeking doesn’t feel like much when you get it. Maybe what you thought would be boring is actually the bliss of not needing anything to happen.

Don’t chase fireworks. Listen for what makes your body soften, settle, and come alive. You may find it's mainly a process of subtraction: less striving, and more intimacy with what's already here.

As always, if you’d like to be held through your process, reach out and we’ll set up a free coaching call.