Pleasure+purpose

Apr 14, 2025

Every year I pick a theme word (inspired by one of Gretchen Rubin’s tips on new year’s resolutions) and this year I sort of cheated and have two, but they are linked: pleasure and purpose. For me, this means finding pleasure in purposeful activities, and, you guessed it, purpose in pleasure.

It’s a fancy way of reminding myself to try to enjoy the hard things I’ve chosen to do, and to recognize that the easy, fun stuff is also connected to something bigger, whether it’s my health, my values, or my goals.

In a year with a lot of challenges—being fully self-employed, living in a new place, training for my first half marathon—these have proven to be useful reminders, although I admit that the “finding pleasure in hard things” part often eludes me.

Still, the “purpose” part is a good way for me to remember that there is a WHY, and that why (or one of many whys, big and small) is something that matters to me.

I was mulling over pleasure+purpose at yoga last night, and I had a lot of time to do so in this stretchy, relaxing yin yoga class. I don’t typically need a lot of motivation or convincing to go to yoga, although leaving my house after 7pm is always questionable. Still, it’s helpful that I have a lot of layers of purpose to rely on to get me out there, just in case the pleasure of lying around on my mat for an hour isn’t enough.

There’s the short term purposes of relaxing my body and mind and helping me sleep better that night. I also meet the need for low-key, casual human interaction, which matters all the more when you don’t know many people where you live.

In the medium term, I know that keeping my muscles loose and my joints fluid will help me recover from my training runs and serve me well in my half marathon training and beyond.

Finally, for me, yoga is part of the long term purpose of staying mobile, active, strong, and feeling good in my body for as long as I can into the future. Even when I go to a yoga class where I actually have to stand up and hold hard poses (gasp) I can hold on to this purpose, while I look forward to the part where I just get to sit down and stretch.

These layers of purpose are how I know that yoga, even just once or twice a week, has an important place in my life. What practices do you have that have short, medium and long term “whys” for you?

Perfectly Cromulent

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