For anyone that does not know, a hedonist is a person that feels that pleasure is the ultimate goal of all of life. That it is the highest achievement and should be reached at any cost. This often involves “no strings attached” sexual encounters, use of drugs, alcohol, and many other things. I was once a publicly announced hedonist. In my pursuit of pleasure there where a few things I came to learn about pleasure and about finding it in life.
- Causal sex only breeds causal sex: It is a common modern fairy tale that individuals can have causal sexual encounters and it not mean anything. More over, it is often believed that individuals can have causal encounters then grow a true relationship out of that. I have never seen this to be true. Time and time again I have observed that causal sex only creates causal sex.
Any relationships that are born out of causal relations are often marred with distrust and little to no emotional foundation. And how could there be trust? It is a relationship built on air. It is built on the idea of no commitment. How then can one expect there to be commitment?
- NSA, no strings attached, sex does hurt people: One of the reasons sex is enjoyable is due to the intimacy of two people. This intimacy is more the physical even if it is not meant to be. It is impossible to not have emotions towards someone you have had sex with. The problem is that in a NSA setting those emotions are often regret, anger, even hate. Rarely is it love or affection. The odd thing is that one can desire something so bad and once they have it they hate it because it did not fulfill them the way they thought it would. That is how I found NSA sex.
- No amount of chemicals can dull what one feels: The party scene in youth culture is so trumped up to be such a freeing and great thing. Party all night and sleep all day. Well, I tried the party scene. I had some good times but never found any pleasure in it. In fact I usually felt worse then I did before, and had all new problems to deal with. Namely whoever I may have taken home. So in other words boys and girls, parting is way over rated. It will give you a lot of headaches and some fuzzy memories. That is about all.
- Drinking in the moments will leave your glass empty: The problem with living for today and today alone is that today will soon end. Then what? Your pleasure is over and a new day begins. So you drink in that day as if there is no tomorrow, but still tomorrow comes and you are still living like it was yesterday. By always living for today one never engages tomorrow but only repeats yesterday. So in truth one living in the moment is living in the past. For the moments run by like a rushing wave.
- It does matter what one does: Probably the single thing I regret most about the things I have done was not what I did to myself but what I did to other people. Full well knowing what I was doing was not bringing me pleasure. I pulled others into it in order to try and make my life better. My thinking was that if I had more people with me in my darkness that it would get bright again. Yet all it did was darken them. That is truly my sin, if you will; knowingly taking people to a lifestyle I knew wasn’t going anywhere.
There are a lot of ways to live one’s life and ultimately we must all choose our own path. Yet remember this, the path anyone chooses affects those they pass along the way just as much as it affects the one walking it.
