When considering the kind of experience that makes life better, most people first think that happiness depends on experiencing pleasure: good food, good jobs, all the comforts that money can buy. If we couldn’t have these, we might as well sit in front of the television on a quiet evening.

Pleasure is an important part of the quality of life, but by itself it doesn’t bring happiness. When people think further about what makes a worthy life, they tend (倾向于) to move beyond pleasant memories and begin to remember other events, other experiences that overlap (有重叠) pleasurable ones but fall into a group with a separate name: enjoyment. Enjoyable events take place when people have not only satisfied a need or met some earlier expectation, but also achieved something unexpected.

Enjoyment is characterized by a sense of curiosity, of achievement. Playing a tennis game that improves one’s ability is enjoyable, as is reading a book that shows things in a new light, as is having a conversation that leads us to express ideas we didn’t know we had. None of these experiences may be especially pleasurable when they are taking place, but when we think back on them afterwards, we would say, “That really was fun” and wish they would happen again. After an enjoyable event we know that we have changed, and grown.

Experiences that give pleasure can also give enjoyment, but the two feelings are quite different. For example, everybody takes pleasure in eating. However, to enjoys food is more difficult — you have to pay enough attention to a meal, so as to sense and tell its various tastes. As this example suggests, we can experience pleasure without any psychic energy, while enjoyment happens only as a result of full attention. A person can feel pleasure without any effort, as long as certain parts in his brain are stimulated (刺激). But it’s impossible to enjoy a tennis game or a book without full attention. It’s for this reason that pleasure does not last long, nor does it make us grow. Growth requires full attention to goals that are new, that are relatively challenging.

Without enjoyment, life will go on, and it can even be pleasant. But it depends heavily on luck and the external (外部的) environment. To achieve personal control over the quality of experience, however, we need to learn how to build enjoyment into what happens day in, day out.