We went to breakfast. “You don’t have school yet,” he told me, “until you do, you’ll spend half your day helping others with their assignments. Be sure to check the schedule sheet on the wall there,” he added, pointing. When I went and looked, I saw that Mitch was down for house chores that morning, and that I was scheduled to help him. There was also a name on the sheet that I did not recognize. It had a line through it.
“Who is Rose Baltich?” I asked him. “There’s no one here by that name.”
“She’s a woman from our cleaning service,” he answered. “She comes and helps us twice a week, so that we don’t have to do it all ourselves. It would be a poor use of our time. We cancelled her for today. ”
“Why do we do any cleaning then? You could have the service do all of it.”
“It’s part of your training,” he told me. “Today, I’m taking her place, to work with you, get you started and teach you. In future, when you’re on cleaning duty, you’ll be working with her or with one of the other apprentices.”
“You’ll notice that only some of the rooms have tick marks next to them. Those are the ones we’ll do today.” Later I learned that the washrooms, the kitchen and the dungeon were cleaned daily, and that other rooms were cleaned every third day. Of course, the apprentices were required to keep their own rooms neat.
That morning, Mitch took me around the training house doing chores. He pointed out the closet with the cleaning equipment, and showed me what was required in the kitchen and washrooms. I would do those rooms while he went and cleaned his and Mistress Lotte’s bedroom, where I’d been a guest last night. He told me to do the kitchens first, and then come down and help him with the dungeon when I had finished the washrooms. The last thing he said was, “The work has to be done, but it’s not the work itself that is important. It’s your attitude in doing it that we care about. Remember that you’re here to learn pleasure.” Then he left me to work alone.
I had no problem cleaning the washrooms. I could buckle down and do chores when I had to. I could even work cheerfully, without feeling bored or annoyed. What left me frustrated was that last speech about learning pleasure. Mistress Lotte had said something like that, about taking pleasure in service. For that matter, I had heard my mom tell me much the same thing. As an ideal, I could see it — but feeling actual pleasure in wiping out the toilet bowls was another story. That was beyond me.
But here it was expected of me; and I had no idea how to pull it off. “Never mind for now,” I told myself. “I’ll ask someone about it later.” The old saying, ‘Fake it till you make it,’ came to me. If I could pretend to be enjoying this work — and that was easy — my trainers would be satisfied, and maybe the pleasure would come.
In this way, I got the washrooms cleaned; and Mitch, when he came back, told me that I had done a good job, except for two spots that I had missed in one of the showers. Then he sent me off to get some lunch, and spend the afternoon studying.
After a light meal of bread, cheese and soup, I went back to my room, and got on with the introductory reading. The Epicureans and their Adversaries was the chapter’s title. Epicurus was a Greek philosopher born in the 3rd century BC who made enemies with his teaching that the central goal and purpose of human life was happiness. The chapter explained that as geishi, we agreed with him, going on to explore (and teach) the role of pleasure in a happy life.
When people think of ‘pleasure,’ they tend to think first of sensual pleasure — compulsively over-indulged in, to boot. But Epicurus, the founder of serious pleasure-philosophy taught no such thing. What he proposed was a philosophical theory of ‘the Good Life,’ based on sustainable pleasure and freedom from fear and pain. For him, these were the soul’s only intrinsic goods — goods that we pursue for their own sake. A thorough-going secularist, he rejected the notion of gods and an after-life, asserting that this life and happiness in it was all there is. He did not claim (and neither do geishi) that pleasure is the only component of happiness. He would accept, as we do, that we don’t just want to have good experiences; we want to be good people and do good things. But he asked his followers to accept that in the last reckoning, we ourselves are our only judges of what is good — not the gods, not the state and its authorities, and not our friends and neighbours.
The chapter continued: It’s not hard to see why Epicurus made enemies — nor, for the same reasons, why people are suspicious of geishi and of pleasure itself. The fear is that pleasure is addictive and distracting: that it will divert people from serving the gods or the state or one’s own social commitments, and from perceiving and avoiding real dangers and threats. Moreover, there is a valid argument that happiness itself is paradoxical, in that the direct pursuit of it is self-defeating. The experience has been that persons who go after happiness itself are perpetually frustrated. The happy people are those who forget themselves and their happiness through their engagement in pleasurable and worthwhile activities. This was the first part of the introductory chapter in a nutshell.
The second part acknowledged the concerns as valid, but went on with the geisha response: The book agreed that happiness is paradoxical and best pursued indirectly through loving engagements and commitments. It introduced Csíkszentmihályi’s concept of ‘flow’ — absorption in one’s present activity and situation — as an ideal mental state. It conceded that pleasure can indeed be distracting and addictive — a point that Epicurus himself was well aware of. It must therefore be treated not as an enemy, but as a somewhat dangerous friend: pursued with moderation and wisdom, and with an eye on the long-term. No one thinks that neglect of necessary duties and chores will bring pleasure in the long run.
For that very reason, the text continued, our pleasures need to be be chosen and indulged with wisdom. For that very reason, the geishi with their experience of mindful pleasure have something worthwhile to teach. Agreeing with the epicureans that only happiness and pleasure (broadly and wisely understood) can be valid ends in themselves — that other values and goals are instrumental to happiness — it concluded that pleasure is a test of authenticity: If you don’t feel good about what you’re doing (at least, better than you would feel not doing it), something is wrong.