54 Flavors of Fun

just plain fun

by Bernard De Koven on May 16, 2013

Of all the many flavors of fun I’ve so far tasted, there’s one that doesn’t seem to have any particular flavor at all. Plain fun is what you might call it. Just plain fun. Fun with no particularly redeeming quality: not necessarily community-building, or body-building, or brain-building; not especially spiritual or transformational or educational; not significantly rational, or emotional, or social, even. Just your plain, every day, ordinary. Just something you happen to enjoy, for the moment. The sun. The breeze. On your skin. In your hair. A joke. A story. A book. Running down a hill. Blowing dandelions. Finding a bird’s egg. Watching a flower. Trying to listen to the slow, serene, slime-smoothed slide of a snail. A child’s touch, a game of solitaire, a magic trick, stacking coins, flipping cards.

This kind of fun is common to all flavors of fun. It’s the medium in which all other flavors of fun gel. It’s just fun. It has nothing to do with anything else. And yet, like all flavors of fun, it heals, it brings us back from wherever we were to where we actually are. It brings us, as they say, back to our senses, to our bodies. It brings back wonder, awe, peace, fascination, love, stillness, harmony. Pure, plain fun.

This is the flavor of fun that, now that I play for life rather than for a living, I have come to savor. O, I love every taste of fun, every taste: the taste of fun when it’s loving, in deed I do; and the taste of fun of the healing kind, and the learning kind, and all those kinds of fun that build us into more completely human beings. But lately I’ve come to appreciate the gift, the simple presence of fun, the glorious wonder of being able to have fun, feel fun, of any flavor. Fun. Just fun.

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adventuring

by Bernard De Koven on March 26, 2013

There’s a certain sense of adventure that seems to accompany you when you are on the playful path. Not all the time. It is yet another flavor of fun, that taste, that feeling of being on a journey through uncharted (at least by you) territory. Territories of the imagination. Hidden territories. Unexplored, dangerous territories. Aboriginal territories. Territories where the waves carry you to yet other territories where there are mountains and waterfalls and trees clothed in strange beauty, harboring sometimes dangerous mysteries.

Some of the adventure is nothing but fantasy. Imagined territories that you give power to, that can almost overpower you. Territories of your own making. Some is in language, some in song, some in paint, some in stone. Some is rooted in the body that is rooted to the world. Some is shared, some lived alone. To boldly go to somewhere new, somewhere on the edge of fear. To find yourself, to rediscover yourself, there, here, on the precipice of sheer delight.

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braving the game

March 15, 2013

One of the things I only managed to hint at when I wrote about the playfulness/trust connection: it takes bravery to play a game. Like it takes bravery to love someone. Bravery, because the more deeply you do either, the more completely you give yourself over to the other. It’s what you have to do [...]

beauty

March 5, 2013

There’s something fun about beauty. Something that touches us deeply enough to bring us from wherever we are into the very center of the moment. Unlike other kinds of fun, beauty doesn’t invite play. Rather, like awe, it invites presence. Like fun, beauty transforms us. We are struck by it, moved, transported, caught in it, [...]

scholarly fun

January 22, 2013

(click to enlarge) Craig Conley, Abcedarian, Eccentric Scholar, author of the notably scholarly, clearly eccentric articles Play it forward, and Proficiency Levels of Humor, compiler of One Letter Words, a Dictionary, has recently created yet one more testimony to the love of literature, the delight of inventiveness, and the sheer joy of witticism – a book called Machinarium [...]

Integrity

January 21, 2013

Read at least this much first: “…on December 2, Spanish athlete Iván Fernández Anaya was competing in a cross-country race in Burlada, Navarre. He was running second, some distance behind race leader Abel Mutai – bronze medalist in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the London Olympics. As they entered the finishing straight, he saw the Kenyan [...]

Fantasy Fun

January 8, 2013

It’s fun to fantasize. It’s even fun to fantasize about fun. It’s an art, don’t you know. Something you get better at. You can fantasize all by yourself. You can fantasize with other people. When you fantasize with other people it can feel at least as real as it feels when you fantasize alone. And [...]

sacred fun

January 7, 2013

Some kinds of fun are sacred. Like the fun you feel when a baby smiles at you. Or the fun of seeing a rainbow in a puddle. Or the fun of a first kiss and the more fun of a second. They are moments that you hold close to you, that cherish you. Many of [...]

practical fun

October 26, 2012

No, not practical jokes. Practical fun. The fun of collecting practical advice, hints, tips. Vast collections thereof. Like this. And perhaps like this. Not to mention this. Collect them. Share them. It’s fun. Another kind of fun, actually. One that we hadn’t contemplated as having a rightful place within our vast collection of more than 54 Flavors [...]

The Shared Whee

October 22, 2012

In my post about coliberative, competitive and cooperative games, I mentioned, perhaps too briefly, this: “What am I doing when I’m pushing you on a swing? Are we competing? Are we cooperating? I think we’re doing something else entirely. I think we’re sharing the whee.” I’m not sure if this is one of your typical flavors [...]

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