3 Scoops of Pleasure, Please
#004 Your body's got ideas worth listening to
“I would like hazelnut, vanilla, and chocolate.” The menu, affixed to the wall, contained at least thirty flavors, all hand-written.
The cashier smiled at me as she asked, “In a cup or a cone?” I noted her red hat matched her red apron.
I looked at the cones. Sprinkles. Chocolate. Plain. “A cone please.” I smiled and pointed to the chocolate waffle cone between us.
I watched her scoop each flavor into the cone. Then she placed the steel lids back above each flavor before she finally lifted the cone above the glass to pass over the shelving to me. Our chestnut brown fingers bumped each other in the exchange.
I handed her the cash. “You can keep the change.” I said before I turned to walk out of the parlor.
Now that I was finally outside, under the sun and in the street I took my first lick of the vanilla, then chocolate, and finally hazelnut, allowing drips of the blend to land onto my pants and shirt, shamelessly.
Passersby of varying nationalities turned their heads and watched me indulge.
I mostly stopped eating ice cream a few years ago. Usually I just go for sorbet, although only sparingly. But a few months back a friend reintroduced me to ice cream, and now I found myself considering a few scoops.
Ten minutes prior to ordering I’d just finished eating inside of Lisbon’s Time Out Market, savoring the last few bites of salty fries. Right after the last bite I stood, walked out of the door and found my body pause in front of an ice cream parlor. It didn’t budge. A simple request made itself known.
Get ice cream and walk up that hill.
Lisbon’s got lots of hills. A lot of them are steep. Often, in summer, you’ll likely break out into a sweat trekking up them. The hill it mentioned was the steepest in my neighborhood. So steep that I often skip it, and take the long way home.
Now that I was outside, cone in hand, ice cream melting, all I had left from the request was to walk up the hill in front of me.
I licked and crossed the street. I licked and walked up the hill. I felt the sweat trickle down my back. I felt my heart pump faster. Between the combined taste of each flavor melting on my tongue, and the burning sensation trickling across my calves, past my hamstrings and up into my glutes, an unexplainable pleasure rushed through my body that almost muffled the burning sensation. It felt intoxicatingly good to walk up a hill and lick an ice cream cone. It was a peak of pleasure that I knew that I wanted to repeat on another hot day.
I wasn’t out of breath at the top of the hill. Usually I would be. And as I neared my apartment my muscles didn’t feel stiff with lactic acid pumping throughout - they actually felt ready for more exertion. I suddenly wanted to ride a bike with an ice cream cone in hand, just as I’d done as a kid. I wanted to hop on an elliptical machine and eat ice cream. It’s absurd, I know. But wasn’t childhood?
Wasn’t the pleasure of being young in the absurdity of combining the mundane with something joyous?
I bit the last bits of the chocolate cone on the way back to my apartment. And by the time I sat on the couch to process how the last seven minutes of the experience had allowed me to feel such a rich joy, I was left with a few questions.
What other simple pleasures have I been keeping from myself? What daily joys had I yet to give into and incorporate into my life?
Growing up as a kid in America the American work ethic is really sewn into the very fibers of your being. I carried this work ethic with me throughout grade school and college and into my first job as a teacher working sixty and seventy hours a week. The American government has even proclaimed that its successes are due to this behavior. Even in my first over seas job in South Korea I found the work ethic was nearly the same. Long hours. Hard work.
But when I moved to Europe and began working with colleagues who didn’t buy into the high-stress, work-is-life meme I was granted a miracle, more moments of pause.
Working in a global company with colleagues that take more breaks, who deeply enjoy high quality food at lunchtime (as well as extended lunchtimes) has taught me to pause. And I mean really pause, especially when my body wants to suggest a great idea.
From them, and my new surroundings I’ve learned a new story, the low-stress, work-is-not-life story.
There are certainly challenges all around us, and in our day to day that may cause us to focus on life’s difficulties. I offer another perspective. We do deserve to develop a relationship with the pleasures of life, and their potencies.
Pleasure isn’t complicated.
I invite you to listen to the great ideas your body has for you. It may send you whispers, halt you in front of an ice cream parlor, or animate itself when confronted with something joyous.
Whatever signals your body sends out, I just want to share that it’s worth pausing to heed those signals. Listen for the pleasures that your body would love for you to experience.
🧠 To build somatic awareness you can find a remote practitioner, here.
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