Innocent and Sinful Pleasures.
It is frequently asked: “What pleasures or recreations may a young man or woman share that are not objectionable.” There are a thousand innocent pleasures within easy reach of all. Pleasures may be classified as, (1) Recreative and helpful; (2) Harmless and enjoyable but neither helpful nor otherwise; (3) Injurious for various reasons and objectionable as being detrimental to spiritual growth and the development of the finer qualities in either sex. To the latter category belong gambling of all sorts, dancing, theatre-going, flirtations and frivolous companionship, and all pleasures that merely “kill time” and induce a temporary excitement. Objectionable pleasures are never recreative—a term that implies healthful and upbuilding if not uplifting qualities.
The greatest tonic, stimulant, and equalizer, writes Lyman B. Sperry, is genuine pleasure. Contentment, satisfaction, joy, are remarkable for their beneficial influence on mind and body. Occupations that are inviting and pleasurable, whether they be called work or play, are helpful to human development, longevity, and efficiency. Diversion, recreation, pleasure, are demanded as an antidote to our feelings of depression and fatigue, a stimulant to our courage, a basis for satisfaction with life. All must have recreation and amusement in order to thrive well, but in seeking them it is easy to find and to follow those which, though apparently, and perhaps temporarily healthful, are finally destructive of things good and satisfying. All amusements which leave a sting, or feelings of surfeit or of regret, are either essentially unhealthful (and therefore unjustifiable), or they are used in such a way as, practically, to make them injurious. There are some so-called amusements which are inevitably bad, and there are others which are bad only when they are intemperately pursued. So much depends upon the time, the manner, the amount, the associations, the tendencies of various forms of activity called amusements, that it is impossible to classify them rigidly as either commendable or objectionable. All intelligent persons must admit that our lives should be conformed to ways that are helpful to advancement in all that is really and permanently good.
Amusements should secure rest from irksome toil and conduce to real recuperation. While they enable fatigued parts of the body to rest, they should also bring into action other parts that need, for the general good of the body, as well as for their own good, to be called into exercise. Genuine and healthful amusements stimulate mental emotion in such a way as to make one forget his burdens and sorrows, they leave in the consciousness a sweet memory which spreads its perfume over and through the succeeding period of toil, and even into the toil of one’s neighbors. There should be no doubt about the effects. Questionable amusements are usually injurious amusements. Some really commendable forms may be in bad repute simply because they are habitually in bad company, or possibly because of mere prejudice. Each one should be intelligently examined as to its nature and influence, and be accepted or rejected only after a fair judgment is passed upon it.
Comparatively few persons lack opportunities for amusement, and with many the great question is what not to do. With so much to select from, how shall we amuse ourselves? The answer is, In any way we please—provided, first, that we can afford it; second, that we find practically that it furnishes the rest and recuperation we need and that without leaving a residuum of regret or of lessened self-respect; third, that our indulgence does not interfere with the natural rights of others, or prove a stumbling-block to them; and fourth, that it is not of such a fascinating nature as to induce us to consume an undue amount of time and energy. It requires a goodly stock of intelligence and conscience to determine, each for himself, what amusements he shall seek, and where, when, and how they shall be sought.
The man or the woman who, at the social party or at the family fireside, plays any kind of a game for stakes, even though they may be trifling, thereby kindles and fans a flame that in many cases becomes unquenchable. The person thus tempted easily follows his impulses, and rushes into anything that will either arouse or gratify the love of excitement.
The moral quality of most forms of amusement may be determined simply by their physical effects. So intimately related are mind and body, so influential is the conscience over physical processes, that nothing which the conscience condemns can be healthful and recuperative. And it is equally true that every form of physical excess or of dissipation, inevitably leaves mental recoils and moral stings.
One of the best men of the day, who has seen much of life and who has studied many of its problems, says: “If an amusement sends you home at night nervous, so that you cannot sleep, and you rise up in the morning, not because you are slept out, but because your duties drag you from your slumbers, you have been where you ought not to have been. There are amusements that send a man, next day, to his work, yawning, stupid, nauseated, and with blood-shot eyes; they are wrong amusements. There are entertainments that give a man disgust with the drudgery of life; with work-tools because they are not swords; with working aprons because they are not princely robes; with domestic cattle because they are not infuriated bulls of the arena. If anything sends you home longing for a life of thrilling adventure, for love that takes poison or shoots itself, for moonlight adventures and hair-breadth escapes, you may depend upon it you are the sacrificed victim of unsanctified pleasure. Our recreations are intended to build us up, and if they pull us down, as to our moral or as to our physical strength, you may come to the conclusion that they are obnoxious.”
Wise people judge all so-called amusements by their actual fruits; by their immediate and their remote influence on the body, the mind, and the soul. It is the part of wisdom to cheerfully avoid all that prove to be dissipating to physical energy, or degrading to moral character; and the highest wisdom as clearly dictates that we cheerfully engage in those things which rest, refresh, and energize our God-given powers.