The passage separates enjoyment from the object being enjoyed. The speaker argues that satisfaction depends less on receiving something objectively valuable than on the meaning attached to the experience. A simple glass of water may therefore provide more enjoyment than an expensive wine if it represents exactly what the person wanted.

The example of the jinni makes the point more sharply. By replacing the requested water with something supposedly superior, the servant removes the element that matters most to the speaker: having his own intention fulfilled. In this sense, enjoyment is linked to imagination, expectation and control rather than to material quality alone. Within Either/Or, the remark also reflects the aesthetic perspective’s close attention to how experience is shaped by desire and interpretation. It suggests that people may value not only what they receive, but also the feeling that events correspond to their own wishes.

Full quotation

“Real enjoyment consists not in what one enjoys but in the idea. If I had in my service a submissive jinni who, when I asked for a glass of water, would bring me the world’s most expensive wines, deliciously blended, in a goblet, I would dismiss him until he learned that the enjoyment consists not in what I enjoy but in getting my own way.”