Give Me the Lobster!

It's an integral part of human nature: we always want what we can't have.

I recently viewed an episode of "How I Met Your Mother," in which a main character, Robin, wants to pursue a relationship rather abruptly because she's been told the other party has given up trying to win her over. Her friend, Lily, draws a parallel between this situation and the "Lobster Incident": Robin was told she was allergic to lobster and could never, ever have it again. Though it almost killed her, she immediately went out and ate a giant plate of lobster. Lily's point was that Robin only thinks she wants this relationship because she wants what she can't have, now that the door has been shut on a possible future.

What is our obsession with the forbidden? Why do we have a compulsion to do what is bad for us, especially when we know it's bad for us? Two reasons: 1. We remember the experience of past pleasure as better than it actually was, and 2. We are constantly seeking happiness; that frequently translates into gratifying, instantaneous pleasure.

Regarding the first point
Our memories are flawed; we tend to romanticize the past. For example, when Robin was told she could no longer eat lobster, she probably wanted it because in her memory, the brief experience of satisfaction and pleasure was so great that she gave it precedence over her health. When we recall minor pleasures, even if they had negative effects, we tend to maximize the memory of the pleasure and minimize, if not eliminate, memories of the negative consequences.

Regarding the second point
We instantly want things we have been told to avoid--but have not experienced for ourselves--because we imagine a pleasurable outcome. We become curious to try things people have told us to avoid. We imagine the experience will somehow be different for us, or that the other person is (for some reason) trying to prevent us from having a new experience of pleasure. We are constantly seeking happiness, and foolishly believe this happiness will come from experiencing pleasure. We operate under the error that pleasure and happiness are equivalent.

In fact, the reality of happiness--joy--is quite different, and the journey toward it often is quite lacking in pleasure. We have to suffer for it. It seems contrary to rational thought, but we didn't make the rules--we simply follow the example of the person who did it first: Christ. As St. Elizabeth Ann Seton said, "Can you expect to go to heaven for nothing? Did not our Savior track the whole way to it with his tears and blood? And yet you stop at every little pain."

It is a truth universally acknowledged that joy, pleasure, or accomplishment achieved without effort is worthless and unsatisfying. We cannot go anywhere without moving; we cannot ever have the experience of true joy without first knowing true sorrow and pain. We would have nothing with which to compare the experience, and the moment would be worthless. It is the biggest conundrum of life that we have to deny ourselves the instantaneous pleasures within our reach that are bad for us in order to grasp at the beginnings of real, hard-won joy.

No matter how much you think you want that lobster, it will never be enough.