A Life You Don't Have to Explain
EMBODIMENT / LIVING
Curiosity, pleasure, and what we have yet to discover
By Kyle Patrick MPA/MSW
I want us to remain interested in what being alive might feel like.
That's an appetite we can lose track of while becoming very good at managing a life. The bills get paid. We know which responsibilities can't wait. An open afternoon appears, and our first instinct is to fill it with something we should have finished already.
Meanwhile, there are things we'd like to experience that never become urgent enough to happen.
A man we want to kiss. A place close to home we've never explored. Something creative we enjoyed before we started worrying about whether we were any good. None of it sends a reminder with a late fee attached, so it slips behind the rest.
The difficulty isn't always that we believe pleasure is wrong. Sometimes we simply keep assuming there will be a better time to give it our attention.
Safety, health, money, and care obligations can leave little room for pleasure. The question is what might be available within the life we actually have, without turning enjoyment into another obligation.
But an available choice can go unnoticed too. We get accustomed to answering what needs us before wondering what interests us. After a while, even wanting something starts to feel unfamiliar.
Then, when something does catch our attention, we start explaining it. Will it improve us? Are we too old to begin? Could it become useful, impressive, or profitable? A modest curiosity acquires a job description before we've given it an afternoon. It becomes harder to find out what we enjoy when every interest has to justify being there.
What catches your attention
Desire is useful information about our experience, though it isn't an instruction to pursue everything that passes through our heads. We can be curious about it. What is the appeal? What do we want to feel? Is the part we keep imagining actually available in the experience we're chasing?
Sex makes that conversation interesting. Wanting to be wanted can be exquisite. So can discovering what we enjoy when we're paying attention to the encounter itself. There is a difference between spending an evening monitoring how desirable we appear and noticing how another man's touch feels.
Self-consciousness doesn't politely retire at thirty. Neither does the capacity for pleasure. A changing body can involve loss, surprise, and new preferences; it doesn't need to become a moral lesson before it gets to have a good time.
The same curiosity reaches beyond sex. A camera can make an ordinary outing more absorbing. Music can give an evening a direction. Learning something can be pleasurable while we are still bad at it, which is inconvenient news for those of us who prefer to debut fully competent.
We can put an extraordinary amount of pressure on a beginner's pottery class. Somewhere, a man who hasn't bought clay is already worried the vase won't be worth inheriting.
Giving an interest one manageable encounter can help: borrowing equipment, taking an introductory session, or spending an afternoon exploring before deciding whether it needs to become a whole new identity. We get some actual experience to respond to. “I'd like more of that” is useful information. So is discovering that the fantasy was better than the activity.
The next decision can be just as modest. Go again. Invite someone. Leave the camera by the door so taking it along becomes easy. There is no requirement to announce a reinvention. A life changes partly through the things we make possible often enough to experience, rather than the things we keep saying we'd love to try.
I'm interested in the version of adulthood that leaves us things to discover. Experience can give us confidence without requiring us to have settled our taste forever. Something that delighted us at twenty-five may still delight us. Something we dismissed then may surprise us now.
In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry answers a question about who he is with “To define is to limit.” [17] He’s a gloriously unreliable source of life advice. Still, I like the possibility of leaving a few things about myself undecided.
That curiosity can coexist with ambition. Wanting to build a business or make demanding work can be part of enjoying life. The distinction is in our relationship to the pursuit: does it engage us, or do we keep expecting the finish line to finally make the rest of life available?
The London Gay Men's Chorus combines musical performances, a community for socializing, and outreach work in schools. [14] Their project contains skill and contribution alongside enjoyment. A serious ambition can grow out of something we love doing with other people; pleasure doesn't always have to sit at the opposite end of the week from purpose.
Having some choice, feeling capable, and feeling connected are central to one influential account of motivation and wellbeing. [11] An ambitious project and a satisfying evening with friends can meet those needs in different ways.
Having an experience before explaining it
There is no single picture of a satisfying gay adulthood. What matters here is whether we get to experience the life we’re living: its affection, appetite, curiosity, and pleasures, however public or private they may be.
Being admired for a life and enjoying it can be different experiences. The impressive job may absorb the hours we most want with friends. The beautiful home may be somewhere we rarely relax. Or we may love both, fully and without apology. The question is whether our own experience gets a say alongside the picture other people see.
We can become more interested in that experience ourselves. The meal tastes good while there are still messages unanswered. Affection can reach us on a day when we've been disappointed in our own behavior. Enjoying something doesn't oblige us to declare the whole life sorted.
And we don't have to turn every pleasure into a defensible use of time. Photography may remain photography. A walk can end without producing a revelation. Some afternoons are lovely precisely because we stop asking what they will do for us afterward.
The Eight—Roots, Truth, Worth, Vitality, Connection, Expansion, Contribution, and Depth—create the conditions for Embodiment. What we discover and value becomes part of how we live: the choices we make, the relationships we nurture, and the experiences we allow ourselves to have.
We might understand where an old rule came from through Roots, admit what we want through Truth, and stop making our worth depend on earning permission to enjoy it. Connection gives us people to share a life with; Depth asks us to stay with an experience long enough to know what it means to us. The pillars work together. Embodiment is what happens as that understanding begins to show up in an ordinary day.
That might mean making the call, accepting affection, or keeping the afternoon we set aside for something we wanted. Sometimes the experience disappoints us. We still learn more by participating than by waiting until we can explain exactly who it will make us. There is room to try something, enjoy it imperfectly, and decide what comes next.
The future will ask things of us that we can't yet predict. It may also offer things we don't yet know we'd love. I think about that when I remember the exhausted man who couldn't imagine wanting another twenty years. His imagination wasn't the limit of what life could hold.
I don't know every part of what comes next. I'm glad I stayed curious long enough to find some of it.
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