People tell themselves often that “we only live once” and use that as an excuse to pursue hedonistic pleasures at the expense of wisdom. Just how important is it to focus on the bigger picture of existence, and not waste one’s time with frivolities?

We have never taught that doing things that are pleasurable is wrong or wasteful or self‑indulgent or selfish. All of life is about seeking a balance, so there is a sharing of responsibility and duty as well as having basic sustenance so one is not a slave to one’s existence in the physical realm and doing nothing but work to eke out an existence to avoid starvation and have decent shelter from the elements. There can be a time for relaxation and pleasure, the problem comes from taking this to excess where it becomes an exploitation of others out of lust or greed to manipulate them through a coercion or misrepresentation, or to harm the self through an indulgence in pleasures that cause too great a sacrifice in taking people away from their duties to help themselves and others in a family group, for example, or a workplace where they are a trusted colleague and expected to be productive. People need to have inner restraint and self-discipline to achieve the kind of balance necessary to see to one’s obligations and duties even at the expense of pleasure in the moment. So this becomes a measure of maturity and character in the end. It is an important goal in the art of living to have that balance in terms of the competition between serving the self and serving others. With the gaining of wisdom, people with sufficient life experience and maturity will see the great rewards that come from being of service to others beyond the self, and will find that much more rewarding than indulging in pleasure personally, because that indeed is a divine perspective indeed, to help others, to raise them up, perhaps give them an advantage one enjoys but is denied to other people. To give of oneself to enable them to share such enjoyments is not only personally rewarding in terms of generating good karma that will be rewarded, inevitably, in the future, it can be a source of great personal pride and satisfaction because to do so is divine as long as there is not neglect of the self—this is why life experience coupled with wisdom will help acquire the ability to establish a healthy balance to see to the needs of the self and to the needs of others to create a win-win situation.