You Are Hereby Ordered To Have Fun
Here we are, in Year Three of the Big Bug Adventure. We’re brain-fogged, and cranky, and bored, and want to Party Like It’s 2019 (but we can’t. Not yet.)
And we’re so tired of being responsible adults. Do we ever remember what it’s like to have fun any more?
Believe it or not, you might feel the same way even if this was a back-to-used-to-be-Normal year. Because a lot of us think “I have to be an adult about things.” Work, and taxes, and car payments and house repairs and responsibilities and deadlines and and and and…..
And “adult” can mean BOOOOO-RING if we aren’t aware.
So why DO people get stuck in a boring rut in adulthood? And why is it important to make sure you still have fun?
We aren’t automatons, much as today’s world encourages that kind of thinking.
When we do the same things over and over — whether work, home chores, even eat the same set meals all the time — our “creativity tires” get bald.
We have less of a grip on life and what makes it meaningful. And we’re more than likely to go off the road with stress, damaging habits, or just plain burnout.
That absolutely doesn’t lead to a happy life. And happiness is that “engine additive” that keeps our lives — and us — running at peak performance!
Here are tips for bringing the “magic” (and fun) of childhood into your adult life:
ONE: Find happiness where you are RIGHT NOW.
What does that look like?
You take your grocery list and make a paper airplane out of it, to see if you can land it in the reusable bags you bring to the store.
You stop waiting for company and have tea and toast on your grandmother’s best china.
You draw with chalk on your own driveway.
You scoop up your furperson (cat, dog, hamster) and have a “schnoodle session” with them, soaking up all that warm unconditional love with purrs or tail-wagging that are just heart-filling.
You put on your favorite music and dance like nobody’s watching.
Happiness can be instantaneous, and delicious, and there’s never enough of it!
TWO: Stop equating “child” with “childishness.”
Think of things you never got to do as a child, and do them now!
One of the most memorable things my husband and I did when we were first dating was build kites out of tissue paper, sticks and strings.
Yes, we could have bought some fancy monstrosity at the toy store.
Yes, they were less than stellar in terms of construction.
But watching something that I made go winging up into a cloudless sky on an April day took me from my forties to five years old in thirty seconds flat. And twenty-two years later, it’s still one of my most cherished memories.
THREE: Make fun a priority.
If you had a health problem, you wouldn’t skip your medication.
If you knew that your engine would seize up if you neglected it, you’d get your car’s oil changed without fail.
Make fun a priority.
It doesn’t mean expensive, or hugely time consuming; it means ditch the “have tos” and the expectations of others for a least a little while every day, to remind yourself of who you are at core — that curious little being who came into the world and saw it as a marvel, not a mess!
