TOTALLY GEEKED!

Fun is hard to take seriously. You don’t see many papers written about fun, for example. 

There are a lot of good reasons for people spending so much effort trying to define fun. One of the best: it’s fun – fun to think about fun, to discuss it, to examine, explore, probe, analyze, toy with. The disappointing thing is that when they finally arrive at something they think to be a “useful definition” (bless them for thinking that way, for believing a definition of fun can prove useful), it doesn’t sound like fun anymore.

It’s funny. We all know what fun is when we are having it. We watch our kids giggling with glee, or totally absorbed in a game of tag or marbles or Angry Birds; and we know that fun is exactly what they are having. Their very behavior defines it.

It’s a little harder for us grown folk. We don’t like to admit to having fun. I guess because we think it’s childish, given the state of the world and paychecks, irresponsible, even. And when we are having fun, we generally don’t like to admit it to anyone, including ourselves. Which probably explains why we’re so puzzled by it that we need to come up with a definition for it.

It’s also true that what’s fun for me (at least, the fun I can admit to myself as having) is probably not fun for you. There are kinds of fun. Different kinds. I tried, just for the fun of it, to see if I could name 54 Flavors of Fun (link is external). I reached 118 before I admitted to myself that my point, if any, had been made 64 flavors ago.

Then I started making a list of things in my life that I am not afraid to think of as “fun.” I called my list a fun list. And as the list got longer, I felt like I was getting closer to understanding, if not defining, what fun meant – to me, at least.

And then I realized that that’s about as close as I needed to come, fun-defining-wise. Because fun is personal. It is an undefining force. It frees you from all prior definitions so that you, for the fun of it, can redefine reality; so that you, just playing around, can manifest your mastery; so that you, because it’s fun, can embrace the mystery of being.

So, for the, you know, fun of it, my wife and I decided to try making our own fun list, and, can I tell you, just the making of it was something very close to transcendent joy.

So, here's our list. Not that it's especially revelatory, but rather so you can get a feel for the whole thing, and maybe try it out with your partner, your family, maybe your clients even.

The list is in no special order. And neither were we. 

Source: Bernie De Koven

How we make our lives more fun

(by Rocky [she] and Blue [me])

Between us

• Paying attention to each other
• Admiring each other’s talents
• Accepting each other’s differences, limits
• Listening to each other, asking questions, getting clear
• Encouraging each other to do what each of us most wants to do
• Making each other laugh
• Being funny
• Doing silly things
• Little acts of improvisation, spontaneous skits
• Playing games (generally, not keeping score)
• Appreciating each other’s success
• Changing the rules
• Being kind to each other
• Who ever gets up first makes breakfast in bed for each other
• Surprising each other
• Making meals for each other
• Making a face in the oatmeal out of strawberries and bananas
• Appearing in an outrageous outfit
• Leaving notes
• Buying each other something special at the grocery or hardware store
• Dancing – spontaneously, sometimes without music
• Sharing memories
• When one of us looks happy (singing, humming or smiling) it makes the other happier
• Planning
• Respecting each other
• Trusting each other
• Touching each other

Between us and the world

• Learning something new together
• Experimenting
• Trying new spices, fruits, foods, etc
• Trying out new restaurants, grocery stores, parks, neighborhoods to visit, roads to travel
• Solving household dilemmas
• Inventing new ways to “make do” New uses for common objects
• Being kind to others
  • To other people (family, friends, strangers)
  • To animals, insects, plants
• Pointing out things to each other that we think the other would enjoy
• Bringing new people into each other’s lives
• Pretending
• Speaking in accents
• Pretend conversations as we walk by people, e.g.: “Did we remember to bury that guy?”
• Walking together
• Exploring different paths
• Walking and talking
• Building junk sculptures on our walks
• Noticing flowers, smelling, touching
• Listening to bird songs, trying to sing along
• Sharing chores – keeping things fair, in balance
• Being with the kids and grandkids
• Helping together
• Deciding together about how to spend and savehttps:
• //www.psychologytoday.com/blog/having-fun/201507/ask-not-what-fun-does-you