According to Imam Fakhruddin al-Razi, worldly pleasures are in fact merely tools to relieve worldly suffering. We derive pleasure from eating due to hunger. We derive pleasure from sex due to the carnal need within. We derive pleasure from travel due to burnout or boredom.
In all of these pleasures we indulge ourselves in, the rule is that the greater the suffering, the greater the pleasure we feel in its relief. Likewise, a person who does not have a certain suffering will not feel the pleasure derived from relief. Try force feeding a person who is already full to the brim; would he still feel the pleasure of eating the food, as delicious as it was at first bite? He would not even want to think of food!
Interestingly, Imam Muhammad Saeed Ramadan al-Bouti observed that the society we live in today constantly bombards us with sexual content, thus reducing our humanity to that as mere sexual animals. When we extend this observation on sex to all other things that our capitalist society constantly bombards us with – the food, the shopping, the need to escape, to spend spend spend – then we realize that we are all in reality, being programmed to be in a constant state of suffering.
We think we are achieving max pleasure when in truth we are all just in crippling constant pain, always seeking for relief.
Just like steroids, the more we apply these pain-relief creams, the more we need of them in the future for them to work. There is no end – only a cycle of more suffering, needing more relief, leading to more suffering. We are all addicts. The only solution? As it is with steroids, we’d all just have to stop seeking these wordly pleasures (in excess), face the withdrawals, and in the long term, find ways to distant ourselves from the massive triggers that cause the suffering within.
May Allah swt protect our (and our young ones) senses from that which cause suffering, and allow us means to use them to attain His pleasure. Ameen.