A-Playful-Path_DeKoven-web

The Fun of Fun
“Don’t let the humor escape you.”
- the Oaqui
So, let’s say you’re playing something – a game, a musical instrument – or,
you’re working on a puzzle, or taking a walk or daydreaming – for fun, you
know. Not because it’s good for you or you feel you’re supposed to, or you
need to do it, not for exercise or relaxation, not even for the health of it.
You’re just sitting on a tire swing somewhere, spinning your self around,
rocking back and forth or forth and back, watching some kids maybe. Beyond
purpose. Beyond necessity. Led to this particular place and time, neither
because of the lure of a carrot or the fear of a stick, but by your own
free will. Freed from consequence. Freed from necessity. Freed from temptation
or worry. Completely at play, swinging and turning, for no other reason
than the fun of it.
Forgive me for asking, but what, precisely, is the fun of it? What’s so fun
about doing nothing special, about sitting in a tire swing, about doing something
just because you feel like doing it, about the feeling of it, about the free
will, about being free from necessity, free from worry, from fear, free from
thinking about hunger, free from worrying about illness, free from dwelling
in pain or fatigue.
Maybe, I’m asking, maybe it’s the freedom itself that’s fun. Like people sitting
in the street, playing dominoes together in the aftermath of a flood, just
because they can, just because it frees them a little from the vicissitudes of
it all. Not just that you have the ability to free your self like that – which is
gift enough, amazing enough…but maybe because freedom itself is fun. Maybe
fun itself is freedom. Maybe that’s why it’s so much fun to watch kids at
play. Maybe that’s why we think kids are having so much fun. Or puppies for
that matter. Because they seem so free from fear and worry and hunger and
illness. Or young springboks springing the way they do, seeming freed from
gravity. Maybe it’s the freedom.
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