Friday, January 12, 2007
Meaningful fun, Major fun, and Deep Fun, too.
I was reading an article called "Happiness 101." So I found myself thinking about doing "meaningful" things. Things like being engaged in meaningful work and doing meaningful deeds and having meaningful relationships and making meaningful nises such as those contained in today's FunCast.
Thinking about all this meaning because the article described a connection between meaningfulness and happiness. And, after significant intro- and extrospection, I came to a natural conclusion: meaningful stuff is fun. Saying, doing, thinking, acting, working, learning almost anything actually meaningful, is always fun. Really fun. Deep fun.
Almost anything meaningful is fun. Even if you're cutting potatoes in a food kitchen for the poor, it's fun. It's a feel-good fun that comes not from what you're doing but who you're doing it with and for.
But when the thing you're doing is itself fun, like, for example, batting a balloon around, and you're having fun batting the balloon with the people you're batting around with, and they're having fun, with you, with each other, and they are people who need to have this kind of fun almost desperately - children, the hospitalized, the institutionalized, the people of countries at war, the less-abled, less-skilled, less-lucky - well, that's a unique kind of fun, a life-fulfilling fun that really needs it's own name.
For the time being, I'm suggesting calling this specific kind of fun, and equally specific kind of meaningfulness, "Major fun."
"But," you everso rightfully exclaim, "Major Fun is a whole nother thing - an award, see, given to, if I'm not mistaken, 'games that make people laugh.'," you right-as-rainedly observe.
"Precisely," I respond, quoting myself, "When a game makes you laugh, whether you're playing alone and laughing or playing with others and laughing with them, it's not just a game, it's an event. And at the moment of the event, the fun you're having is as meaningful as breathing. Deep Fun. Meaningful fun. Major fun. If you know what I mean."
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
Thinking about all this meaning because the article described a connection between meaningfulness and happiness. And, after significant intro- and extrospection, I came to a natural conclusion: meaningful stuff is fun. Saying, doing, thinking, acting, working, learning almost anything actually meaningful, is always fun. Really fun. Deep fun.
Almost anything meaningful is fun. Even if you're cutting potatoes in a food kitchen for the poor, it's fun. It's a feel-good fun that comes not from what you're doing but who you're doing it with and for.
But when the thing you're doing is itself fun, like, for example, batting a balloon around, and you're having fun batting the balloon with the people you're batting around with, and they're having fun, with you, with each other, and they are people who need to have this kind of fun almost desperately - children, the hospitalized, the institutionalized, the people of countries at war, the less-abled, less-skilled, less-lucky - well, that's a unique kind of fun, a life-fulfilling fun that really needs it's own name.
For the time being, I'm suggesting calling this specific kind of fun, and equally specific kind of meaningfulness, "Major fun."
"But," you everso rightfully exclaim, "Major Fun is a whole nother thing - an award, see, given to, if I'm not mistaken, 'games that make people laugh.'," you right-as-rainedly observe.
"Precisely," I respond, quoting myself, "When a game makes you laugh, whether you're playing alone and laughing or playing with others and laughing with them, it's not just a game, it's an event. And at the moment of the event, the fun you're having is as meaningful as breathing. Deep Fun. Meaningful fun. Major fun. If you know what I mean."
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
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