Fun for Fun's Sake

Every action I take, every dollar I spend, every minute I allocate feels like it must serve a purpose.

It has to be dedicated toward a defined responsibility. ​The responsibilities include earning money, minimizing my impact to the planet, and trying to understand and navigate an increasingly complex world. If an activity doesn't fit into one of these buckets, the energy feels wasted.

I know I’m not alone in this.

I remember my university days. If an exam was coming, I spent every waking moment reviewing. My mind told me that one extra minute of study could be the single variable that determined my grade.

That mindset never really left.

Now, instead of grades, I measure every minute against a greater moral or practical obligation. It makes me think of the scene near the end of Schindler’s List, where he looks at his possessions, arguing he could have done more.

What if I could do more to prepare for the uncertain future? Shouldn't I be spending every waking minute preparing for collapse when that one extra minute might someday mean the difference between life or death?

In this world, fun feels like a luxury I cannot afford.

There is always something more useful and important to do with time than simply having fun. But when is it enough? When do we allow ourselves to stop equating fun with wasted time?

What is fun? It could be simple pleasure with no connected objective: listening to music, reading fiction, or building a model.

Even as I write these examples, my dogged inner voice rationalizes the activity by connecting it to a goal. Music = stress relief. Reading = learning. Building = hands-on skills. I have a hard time doing anything just because I enjoy it. Fun for fun's sake.

I considered including a section here about "why it's important to have fun," as if I had to justify it as some sort of productivity enhancer or educational tool. Maybe there is truth to that, but I’m not doing it. This article is about rejecting that connection. It is about doing something simply because you enjoy doing it.

We adults have smothered that skill. We envy children who do it effortlessly. They chase or spin in a circle. Wasted time if this were done by adults, yet a child's internal accounting system registers the experience as a net gain.

What is the point of life? Is it to work? To fight? To prepare? I'm sure adults and children would answer quite differently.

So much of what adults do is meant to ensure we have time for fun later, but for many of us, that time never comes. Or worse, the time arrives, and we have completely lost the ability to use it.

​I know comfortably retired people who spend all day stewing about politics and complaining. They no longer know how to access fun. They only know how to be busy.

Biologically, we exist to procreate and colonize. Like cockroaches, you could argue. But we have been given the gift of consciousness to make more of this life. We have the option to experience it, no matter what the future has in store for us.

How can I permit myself the mental freedom to once again embrace fun for no other reason than that it feels good?

My name is Sarah and I run Collapse2050. I dont use a pay-wall because I want everyone to benefit from the information and discussion

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