Thursday, November 05, 2009
Learning to have fun - part four - embracing the grump
With the apparently unlimited opportunities for fun offered to us every moment, it is often puzzling that there are times when we actually choose not to have it. Fun is so, well, fun. Why, when we could so easily be having fun this very minute, would we choose to have anything else?
Sure, there are many, many things to be worried about, to be angry about, even - poverty, injustice, callousness, selfishness, greed, disease, the myriad of miseries. But none of those preclude fun. As so many people who have devoted so much of their lives and times to helping people attest to - the work, as hard and sobering as it can be, is most often fun of the greatest, deepest, and most profound ilk.
And yet, from time to time, we get grumpy. We get so grumpy that we reject rejoicing, deny delighting, and all but celebrate suffering.
The Oaqui attribute this to the need to acknowledge The Not-Yet Fun. "...our world," explain/s the Oaqui, "apparently came into being during The Billion Years of not-yet-fun, which was billions of years after the whole idea of not-yet-fun was considered at all funny. Fun...is the exception. Not-yet-fun the rule. This is why making anything lastingly fun frequently requires a combination of lifelong commitment, spiritual heroism and a multi-million dollar marketing campaign."
The worse thing one can do when one feels the need to be grumpy is to deny the grump - privately or publicly. The best, not only to acknowledge it (again both privately and publicly), but to embrace it. Letting people know that you are feeling grumpy helps them give you the space you need to wallow, and gives them the permission to acknowledge the existence of the not-yet-fun in their own lives and loves. Letting yourself and the world-at-hand know that you are feeling grumpy helps acknowledge and identify the not-yet-fun, and to reclaim your purpose as someone whose sole goal in life is to make it more fun.
And, for the more sobering purposes in our lives, this BBC article cites Prof. Joe Forgas' recent findings that one's "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style." Which one can use most constructively, especially when helping people understand that grumpy is what you are currently feeling.
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
Sure, there are many, many things to be worried about, to be angry about, even - poverty, injustice, callousness, selfishness, greed, disease, the myriad of miseries. But none of those preclude fun. As so many people who have devoted so much of their lives and times to helping people attest to - the work, as hard and sobering as it can be, is most often fun of the greatest, deepest, and most profound ilk.
And yet, from time to time, we get grumpy. We get so grumpy that we reject rejoicing, deny delighting, and all but celebrate suffering.
The Oaqui attribute this to the need to acknowledge The Not-Yet Fun. "...our world," explain/s the Oaqui, "apparently came into being during The Billion Years of not-yet-fun, which was billions of years after the whole idea of not-yet-fun was considered at all funny. Fun...is the exception. Not-yet-fun the rule. This is why making anything lastingly fun frequently requires a combination of lifelong commitment, spiritual heroism and a multi-million dollar marketing campaign."
The worse thing one can do when one feels the need to be grumpy is to deny the grump - privately or publicly. The best, not only to acknowledge it (again both privately and publicly), but to embrace it. Letting people know that you are feeling grumpy helps them give you the space you need to wallow, and gives them the permission to acknowledge the existence of the not-yet-fun in their own lives and loves. Letting yourself and the world-at-hand know that you are feeling grumpy helps acknowledge and identify the not-yet-fun, and to reclaim your purpose as someone whose sole goal in life is to make it more fun.
And, for the more sobering purposes in our lives, this BBC article cites Prof. Joe Forgas' recent findings that one's "mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style." Which one can use most constructively, especially when helping people understand that grumpy is what you are currently feeling.
from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
Labels: having fun
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