Pleasures and Comforts: The Case of Television Remote Controls

Pleasures or Comforts?

One of the obvious facts about human experience is that we adapt to pleasure. A new car, a new house, or a new romantic partner eventually - and sometimes quickly - lose their magic. If we do not find something more sober that is appealing about the car, the house, or the partner, we start looking elsewhere.

The extreme case of adaptation to pleasure is that the source of our good feelings becomes thoroughly taken for granted, until it is absent. Then we of course miss it. So, positive psychologists distinguish between pleasures and comforts, with comforts being former sources of pleasure that we now take for granted until they are absent. I describe this transition as the Big Yellow Taxi Effect, after the wonderful song by Joni Mitchell that tells us that we "don't know what we got til it's gone."

Here is an example from my own recent life. For whatever reason, last night I lost the remote control to my television set. I wanted to watch television, though, catching the sports scores on ESPN and getting up-to-date on Dictator Dominoes in North Africa on CNN, so I made use of the channel selection and volume controls on the set itself. I chose a show to watch, but when commercials appeared, I decided to change the channel. I got out of my recliner chair (five feet from the television!) and chose a new show and adjusted the volume in consideration of my neighbors. Then another commercial aired, so I repeated the process. And then I stopped. Watching television was too difficult, and I turned it off and picked up a book!

Coming of age in the Chicago suburbs in the 1950s, I watched the four channels available: 2, 5, 7, and 9. There was no remote control, and I would watch a show (including its commercials) for 30 or 60 minutes. Then I would choose a new show. No big deal. Indeed, watching television was fun.

When a television remote control became available some years later, my viewing pattern changed. I flipped channels and adjusted the volume at a dizzying pace, as I am sure many of you do. That was really fun!

But I eventually adapted to what a television remote control afforded, and when it went missing last night, I was so annoyed that I stopped watching television altogether.

I found my remote this morning, but that is not the positive psychology point of this essay. The point is about pleasures and comforts, and how the former can become the latter. I have no magical formula for how to keep a pleasure a pleasure and not let it slip away into the comfort category. However, if we periodically did without our comforts, we might consciously appreciate them more, and life would be more worth living.