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What’s Fun Got To Do With It?

January 6, 2012 | Filed under: Fun, Ministry, Pastoral Care, Self Care

As part of my commitment to self-care, I’m trying to have more fun. It sounds easy enough on the face of it, but almost immediately the questions arise, what is fun? Is reading a book fun? Or is it just relaxing? Is all relaxation fun? Is all fun relaxing?

I would be embarrassed to share how I’m wrestling with the concept of “fun,” except that I’m now discovering how many people are similarly struggling. In my group of seven chaplain residents, three of us are actively working on figuring out what is fun and then trying to have some. That’s 40% of us. And in the mental health units at the hospital, the occupational therapists regularly offer groups on “leisure skills” because it turns out that lots of people aren’t sure what fun is and how to have some.

In helping me brainstorm, a friend recently sent me some ideas of things that are fun for her:

  • Walking / hiking outdoors
  • Taking a walking tour
  • Singing
  • Going to a concert
  • Arts and crafts (like visiting a mosaic studio or one of those paint-your-own ceramics places)
  • Visiting a museum
  • Doing something touristy
  • Cooking with a friend
Here are some things I typically think of as fun:
  • Attending a baseball game
  • Going to the movies
  • Bowling
  • Amusement parks
  • Ice skating
  • Miniature golf
  • Murder mystery parties
  • Playing card and board games
And perhaps most importantly, here are the things from my friend’s list that I don’t think of as fun (which doesn’t mean they’re not fun for my friend! It just means they’re not fun for me):
  • Walking / hiking outdoors
  • Taking a walking tour
  • Singing

Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy those things. But they don’t seem “fun,” in part, I think, because they are so accessible. I sing around the house and in the car all the time. Walking is similarly…pedestrian (sorry, I couldn’t resist it).

So what do all the other fun things have in common?

  • These activities are not part of daily life, so there needs to be some intention to make them happen.
  • Many of these activities require some adventurousness. Some things sound fun to me just because I’ve never done them before. Going to a museum I’ve never visited sounds more fun than going to one I’ve seen.
  • Many of these activities either require someone else to participate (card games being much less fun on one’s own) or are simply more fun with more people.
  • For me, many of these activities discourage my mind from wandering, enhancing my ability to be fully present. (This is another reason walking isn’t fun for me; walking often encourages my monkey-mind, and I just spend the time walking and thinking or, if with a friend, walking and talking.)
  • And finally (and maybe this should have been listed first), for each of the activities that sound fun to me, I can easily imagine that at some point, I’ll be laughing.

Oh yeah, laughter! That magical ingredient. Laughter is why we sometimes exclaim after an event, “That was fun!” We’re surprised that we laughed so much, and glad. That’s why fun can’t always be planned or predicted. Likewise, sometimes we expect something to be fun, and it’s not: we didn’t laugh and enjoy ourselves as we had hoped. The absence of laughter lets us know it wasn’t fun after all.

This is also why doing anything with a friend or group of friends increases the likelihood of it being fun: there’s more opportunity for laughter.

So maybe the question I’m pondering isn’t really “What is fun?” Maybe the real question is “What makes me laugh?”

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