Knowing Your Simple Pleasures: An Exercise in Knowing Yourself

Everyone talks about the benefits of taking time out for the “simple pleasures.” The idea is that we will be happier if we regularly do those inexpensive, easy-to-do activities that give us joy. That sounds, well, simple — right?

But it isn’t. The problem for many of us is that we don’t know what our simple pleasures are. We don’t know what makes us happy. Let me explain. We spend our childhood and adolescence doing whatever the grownups want us to do. So we end up going camping because our parents want to. And we see the movies that our families want to watch. Then we grow up, leave home, and in an effort to make friends, we do all kinds of things we may not necessarily enjoy, but that give us a social life, e.g., going to bars and having mind-numbing conversations with drunk people.

There is nothing inherently wrong with doing activities that either our families or friends enjoy. That is the way that we deepen those relationships. The problem is that we also need to figure out what we really enjoy.