Grown-Up Fun

Several years ago, when I was teaching at Esalen, a woman named Magdalena Cabrera came into my life. Last Sunday, Magdalena invited me to help her and a significant passel of her wonderful friends celebrate her birthday. I led a two-hour version of my 5-day program. And, because of her, and her friends, and the park and the finally perfect Palo Alto weather, we created something profoundly playful, lovingly fun.

In one of our discussions, we talked about the politics of fun - namely about how we so often feel that we don't deserve to have fun, that we are doing something wrong, something immoral, given the harsh realities of harsh reality. Magdalena was reminded of something she wrote me in response to a rather profound insight from my rather profound brother-in-law. It captures much of that feeling:

I too feel unable to enter into Fun when so much feels wrong and sad and overwhelming in the world today, everyday. I forget your teaching, so to speak, that Fun IS part of the solution and not just a form of denial, an escape, a narcissistic indulgence at the expense of others who are not as fortunate as I am...Just thoughts, which bring me back to the mindfulness practice that DeepFun is for me. It is the practice of Minor Fun all the time, despite the trying external circumstances on this beautiful and fragile earth I love and despite the woe I see. And as I practice this path, I want to change my paradigm and begin to really believe that having fun, living fun, teaching fun, being fun, can transform this world, that it is part of the solution to the distress. IF not the world at large, it may have the power to transform MY little world, my circle of influence, I hope. And that is a step in the right direction.

We continued that dialogue, Magdalena, myself, and Bruce Williamson, long after everyone had left. Two things we noted: 1) starting anything with fun is probably the best way to prepare for everything else that isn't, and 2) given the world and being a grown-up in it, having fun is inescapably a political act.

O, as they say, MG! I think we might have found the difference between the fun we have as children, and the fun we have as adults:

Kids play because they have to. It's how they learn the world, how they grow, how they cope. Grown-ups play because they choose to. It's how they change the world. It's how they endure.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith