The Most Pleasant, Non-Drug, Non-Sexual Experience a Human Can Have
Before the main attraction, bookmark this 75-minute podcast episode named after my primary interests since age 13:
There are questions you ask at a dinner party to seem interesting.
Then there are questions that rearrange human molecules.
This belongs in the latter category:
It sounds innocent. Like a question you’d answer while twirling your straw in an overpriced cocktail. It pokes at the soft tissue of our lives. The places we didn’t know were bruised. Because if you’re not actively cultivating this kind of pleasure then what exactly are you cultivating?
Let’s start with the obvious: the usual suspects are off the table. No orgasms. No THC gummies. No psilocybin-laced hiking retreats with a shaman named Ron. We’re talking unenhanced, unmedicated, unpolluted joy.
What’s left is what matters most.
I view this conversation as a counter to fear-mongering about young adults spending more time alone.
Now that every psychologist/author has flogged us silly with the finding that the greatest predictor of happiness is satisfying social relationships (source), we can drill further. Even the authors of this research offer details they failed to account for 15 years earlier (source):
Almost all of the very happy reported that they have someone they can count on to help them when in trouble (94%) and that they were treated with respect on the previous day (98%), whereas this was true for less than half of the unhappy (43% and 52%, respectively). Virtually none of them reported being assaulted. Moreover, the very happy people spent more hours with their family and friends than did the mildly happy or the very unhappy. However, even in the unhappiest group, many experienced these felicitous conditions, and so social connections are virtually necessary for high happiness but not sufficient for it.
Great social relationships can exist whether you’re happy or unhappy. Many of your greatest life events do not involve other people.
Why not begin with a moment that hit me this weekend in New York City? I traveled there to film a television show - cancelled because of thunderstorms. Objectively, this should be an adverse event. But no.
There’s a kind of quiet that follows a storm. Stillness. The trees are slick and dripping. The sky is bleached and raw. The air tastes like mineral. You step outside barefoot and the grass kisses your soles like it missed you. There’s a breeze, not dramatic, just clean. You feel like you’re the only person awake in the world.
That. That’s it.
The wordless miracle of existence.
No dopamine spike. No purchase. No performance.
Just… being.
With this autobiographical moment as prelude, let’s stroll through four categories of profoundly meaningful experiences…
And a formula for well-being that I never shared until now…