| Article One: From the Archives (2022): On summer FUN and how to get it, with Catherine Price
In her recent TEDTalk, American science journalist Catherine Price observed something that should make us all pause: “It’s harder than we think it should be to actually feel alive.”
Consider that statement: We’re so busy constantly scrolling (and often “doing” things) that we forget how to live! We forget that life should consist of more than days filled with frenetic activity.
Price says: “We keep ourselves busy to the point of exhaustion. But we’re also languishing. We feel a little bit dead inside.” She thinks we’re living close to despair, staying busy because we know that we are not truly living and we simply don’t know what else to do about it.
Her answer? “We need to have more FUN!”
But what does that mean?
Price argues that our confusion over what actually constitutes “fun” arises from the sloppy way in which we use the term: we often use it to describe leisure activities (e.g. “We had a fun weekend with my in-laws at the family cabin”), when the activity may not be enjoyable–or worse, may even be “a waste of time” (present family, excluded, of course).
Price gives as an example our scrolling through social media, an activity we might assume is “fun,” but which she says often “makes us feel bad about . . . everything.”
Even our best English language dictionaries have trouble defining the term “fun”: According to them,“fun is amusement or enjoyment, or lighthearted pleasure,” and refers to what children “have in the play area.”
Fun seems to be, as Price observes, “frivolous and optional.”
When she was working on her project about fun, collecting stories on the topic from people all over the globe, Price says they would “tell you about some of the most joyful and treasured memories of their lives.”
But such memories are not simply “lighthearted pleasure, not just for kids and . . . definitely not frivolous.”
Price suggests that fun is, in fact, “the secret [to] feeling alive.”
Clearly the term deserves a new, “more precise” definition!
Fun is a feeling, she asserts, not an activity, although when asked to describe “fun,” most people list “dancing” or “skiing,” or “pickleball” as examples.
Some “serendipity” (or downright chance) is involved in the word, since activities or events we expect to be fun often disappoint us, while those we don’t expect to enjoy can become “ridiculously fun.” Sound familiar?
Price says that it’s easy to tell someone who is having fun, because they look as if “they’re being illuminated from within.” True fun “produces [a] visceral sense of lightness and joy.” People can radiate fun.
From her interviews with dozens of people from diverse cultures, Price says that “three factors are consistently present” when we experience fun, yielding a much more accurate definition than what the OED or Webster’s tells us.
These three terms are “playfulness,” “connection” and “flow.” Where these experiences overlap is the space of “true fun”(see the venn diagram below, provided by Price).
“Playfulness,” she says, is not playing games or make-believe but “having a lighthearted attitude, of doing things for the sake of doing them and not caring too much about the outcome. Letting go of perfectionism.” Playfulness means not being defensive and “not taking ourselves too seriously.”
“Connection” refers to “the feeling of having a special, shared experience.” It is possible to be alone when this happens (and so to feel connected to oneself and/or to an activity), but most often, another person is involved—“even for introverts.”
“Flow” is a state where we’re so intensively engaged and focused on what we’re doing that “we can even lose track of time.” (e.g. “in the zone” as a musician or athlete).
Price argues that “it’s possible to be in flow and not [to] have fun, like if you’re arguing with someone. But you cannot have fun if you’re not in flow,” she says.
Each of these three factors is enjoyable on its own. “But when we experience all three at once, something magical happens: we have fun.” And that “doesn’t just feel good, it is good for us.”
(i) She says that fun is so beneficial that it “ is not just the result of human thriving, it’s its cause.” For instance, fun is “energizing,” so that when people describe such moments, “they glow: It’s like a fire has been lit inside of them and the energy and the warmth they give off is contagious.”
Whereas “so much of life drains us . . . fun fills us up.”
(ii) Fun requires us to be “present,” or in-the-moment, but doesn’t require meditation, yoga, etc. Apart from presence, there’s no other way that fun can arise.
(iii) Fun also unites us in a “really polarized world.” When we have fun with others, “we don’t see them as having different ethnicities or religions from ours. We connect with them as human beings.” She adds that such a connection is the first step whereby we can begin to solve the world’s problems.
(iv) “Fun also makes us healthier.” Isolation and loneliness can cause hormonal changes in our brains and bodies that increase the risk of disease. But when we have fun, we become “relaxed and more socially connected,” both of which are health-giving. So, Price argues, “having fun is a health intervention.”
(v) Finally, fun is “joyful.” While we read books or listen to favourite music, the truth is that “when we are in a moment of having fun, we are happy.” Price says this: The “secret of long-term happiness may be simply to have more everyday moments of fun.”
In order to have “more fun,” she says, we should do all we can to increase our everyday moments of playfulness, connection and flow.
Here are some ways:
(i) Reduce distractions in order to increase flow. Distractions disrupt flow. The chief source of distraction in 2023 is our smartphones. (Act accordingly!)
(ii) Increase connection by interacting more with other human beings in real life. This is easier and less scary than we (huddled over our phones) tend to fear.
Interaction starts by making eye contact with someone. “Say ‘Hello,’” Price advises. If that goes well, introduce yourself. From there, ask an interesting question (e.g. “What’s one thing that delighted you today?”)
(iii) Increase playfulness “by finding opportunities to rebel.” This doesn’t mean becoming a total iconoclast, but to show “playful deviance,” to “break the rules of responsible adulthood” and “give yourself permission to get a kick out of your own life.”
(iv) Finally, Price recommends that having fun should be a “priority.” Try to reproduce the circumstances (including other people’s presence) that have created fun for you in the past. Make some time in your schedule to have fun. “Treat fun as if it’s important, because it is,” she enthuses.
Fun brings “more creativity, more productivity, more resilience,” Price says. Fun can make us, as she claims, a better spouse, parent and friend.
Fun is needed during every month of the calendar, but reading Price’s insights on it may help you enjoy summer even more!
Fun, she concludes, for anyone still puzzled by it, is “a distillation of life’s energy. And the more often we experience it, the more we will feel that we are actually alive.”
Now what would be better than that, this summer?
And now it’s your turn: do you agree with Price’s definition of fun and why it matters?
Please write in; I’d be delighted to hear from you!
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An unexpected idea must “violate people’s expectations.” It has to be counterintuitive (e.g. the idea that a bag of movie theatre popcorn is “as unhealthy as a whole day’s worth of fatty foods” [16]). We can engage people’s curiosity over longer periods of time by “systematically opening gaps in their knowledge—and then filling those gaps.”
The only reliable way to beat this “curse of knowledge,” the Heaths say, is (1) not to learn anything—(generally not a good idea); and (2) to take your ideas and transform them, using the six principles of SUCCES.
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