Can life be fun? Can MY life be fun? I know that fun is a subjective experience – everyone has a different definition of what they consider to be fun. I see that diversity all around me just in my little world. One person in my circle loves to dance, and another loves to play video games – neither of them would find the other activity “fun”.
Honestly I quite often find myself thinking “I wish my life were more fun”. I mean, I remember different periods of my life that were quintessential fun for me. I moved to Mexico when I was in my early 20’s, for example, and had SO much fun. I didn’t speak the language, I only knew one person there, I didn’t have an income, and I happened to stand out like a sore thumb everywhere I went.
Fun!
To someone else though, that might not sound like fun at all. Me? I loved every minute of learning Spanish, every new flavor that I tasted in foods that I had never even heard of, developing deep friendships that bridged all our cultural differences and made me feel like a citizen of the world.
Now I find myself in a moment in my life that isn’t very fun for me and that is why I seem to be thinking on a daily basis “I wish my life were more fun”. Then it dawned on me the detail that I have been missing these last couple of years:
Before you can have MORE fun, you have to have SOME fun!
Sometimes life might happen to be fun and you can go along for the ride, but sometimes you have to create the fun, find the fun, instigate the fun! You have to have some fun before you can have more fun.
Here is where the idea of building momentum applies; it’s foolish for me to think I can go from relatively no fun to delirious fun in one step. I need to remember that any emotional experience tends to ride a wave of momentum, no matter which direction it is going. If an emotion has some momentum in a direction that I don’t want it to, then it is up to me to patiently slow that momentum down enough that it can turn around and go a different direction.
On the subject of fun, I have a couple of years of thinking over and over again that life just isn’t that fun. My first task is to slow down that momentum by thinking less emphatically that life isn’t fun. What if I said to myself things like “I’m in a period of regeneration, getting ready for an exciting new part of my life” or “quiet times are important too” or “I love knowing that because of the contrast of these last few years when something fun does happen I won’t be able to miss it”, etc.
Softer statements like that poke holes in the emotional momentum, and eventually I will find myself saying “that looks like fun, I think I’ll do that for a while”! That’s the type of momentum I can then build upon and find some fun in my life.
Then I can have more and more fun!