What Even Is ‘Fun’ Anyway?
Here is an actual thought I just had: Oh boy, I know what would be fun! A *different* flavor of tea! Yes, it’s a cry for help. But also, I’m probably not alone in finding that life during Covid has skewed toward the monotonous.
Seven or maybe 100 months in, “something like life has resumed and suspended panic has mellowed into sustained malaise,” as Rachel Sugar writes in Vox. She recalls going to an outdoor comedy show and wondering, Is this fun? “What was fun? I can no longer remember… Is Emily in Paris fun? Is a Zoom birthday party fun, is ordering a pizza fun, are jokes fun, is wine fun? Have I ever experienced fun?”
Maybe the problem is that even before the pandemic, we’d gotten a little out of touch with what “fun” is. Remember those eyeball-stinging Instagrammable pop-up museums? Were those fun or sort of terrible? Remember autumns stacked with one cute, fall-leaf-hued photo op after another? Were those ever really fun? Perhaps we had already lost track, substituting what looks like fun for what feels like fun.
Pandemic life is not about Big Experiences or even social media-friendly snapshots. If we are going to get through this in one emotional piece, we are going to have to really stay connected to small and tangible ways to feel good. At the risk of sounding super un-fun, here are Four Principles of Fun to keep in mind:
