Pleasure is addictive and animal; enjoyment is elective and human.

Pleasure happens to you; enjoyment is something that you create through your own effort. Pleasure is the lightheadedness you get from a bit of grain alcohol; enjoyment is the satisfaction of a good wine, properly understood. Pleasure is addictive and animal; enjoyment is elective and human.

the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that enjoyment gives you a sense of effort, forward movement, and accomplishment.

as two psychologists wrote in 2021, during enjoyment, one “commits oneself to savoring the situation and engaging in the task to have positive feelings of joy and fun.”

the memory of a meal enjoyed with friends transcends the immediate experience and can bring good feelings long after it is over.

Some people ruin their enjoyment of life by using it to show others how happy they are.

Those who voluntarily shared their photos on social media enjoyed their experience 8 percent less than those who kept the photos for their own memories. The researchers argue that this happened because sharing the photos online created pressure to present oneself in a positive light, which is bad for happiness.

Enjoyment can also be ruined by a worldview that is excessively practical, in which we feel our time and energy should never be “wasted.”

People who consider activities such as hanging out with friends wasteful enjoy the activities 12 percent less than those who consider them to be productive.

the 20th-century German philosopher Josef Pieper writes, “Leisure is only possible when a man is at one with himself.” Enjoyment of life—whether that means spending “unproductive” time with others, reading a good book, or taking a long walk—has a loftier significance than good feelings do.

Enjoyment means refusing to be managed by pleasures, nor subjugated by joyless drudgery. Pursuing it is a declaration of independence from your base impulses, be they licentious or despotic. It is a key ingredient in creating the life you truly want.