Monday, September 21, 2015

Let Us Have Some Fun!


Remember when you were a kid? From the time you hopped out of bed in your footie pajamas to the time your parents dropped your exhausted body back between the sheets you had fun.
Kids have fun. They are supposed to have fun. It is the time in your life where all the worries of the world are held aside by your parents so you can just play.
You get to play with neat toys and get together with friends to play sports and games. You can pretend to be a princess or a cowboy and scream at the top of your lungs.
Everyone from parents and grandparents to complete strangers accept that little people running around wildly and exploring the world are having fun. How long can this fun last?
When does fun end?
Well discipline can end the fun. That sucks. Being told you can’t do this or you can’t do that when you are just playing bums the fun.
Responsibility is a fun downer too. Suddenly you can run around with your friends because you have to cut the grass or that video game you want to play will have to wait until the dishes are put away.
School homework and work and family all get in the way of fun. And soon fun turns into work and we all know there is NO FUN at work.
Why not?
All during the growing up period of life, you are molded and directed and asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You might decide on a doctor or lawyer or governmental bureaucrat because that sounds like fun. Well boys and girls any of those jobs takes a lot of schooling and long hours and it is work. Unfortunately many of you and me will whine up with mundane or even revolting jobs like garbage collector or security guard or football stadium ticket taker. That’s no fun.
So all of our problems and our family problems and our children’s problems are that we don’t know how to have fun anymore. Sure you couldn’t grow up to be a princess or a cowboy, but when you pretended a stick was a horse or a ring of flowers was a crown, it was fun.
We have become accustomed to having electronic media or expensive travel locations or outlandish sports to replace our pretend with what we associate to fun. We drag out families to short vacations to walk on concrete and sit in scary rides and eat miserable over-priced food and tell everyone we are having fun.
The rest of the time we routinely walk through the motions of the day-to-day effort to earn a paycheck then go home to wash it all away only to repeat tomorrow. Why does it need to be that way?
No matter what kind of job or career or occupation you provide, it can be fun. You can make it fun. Maybe not as outrageous as a little kid screaming, but taking the monotony out of the daily grind can be easy.
Little things that will make you smile during the day can make work fun. If you can get along with others, whether in a cubicle or a road crew, can make the day go by with a better mood.
We work and take orders and obey discipline and rules, but it is our own attitude to enjoy the task or complain about it.
Tomorrow there will be a cowboy accountant and a princess waitress and an astronaut CEO. Enjoy your imitation like you did as a kid.
Have fun.

1 comment:

TripleG said...

I wish everyone had those moments during their workdays where they stopped and thought for a moment, "I'm getting paid for this? I'd do it for free!" Those are what you remember fondly; the frustrating days are best just forgotten. I guess that's why so many more people than are needed pursue the arts -- for that chance to remain themselves and do their best without pointless constraints. The Who said the kids are all right, so go ahead and be a kid whenever you can.