Having Fun

Having fun is an individual matter. I have fun writing, publishing books, traveling, talking with friends, spending quiet evenings with my beloved, seeing films, eating interesting food, hanging out in the buff at hot springs, and doing tai chi, just to mention a few pursuits that occur to me on the spot. Your list will be very different from mine, but I would encourage you to start making one. Just put things on that occur to you in no particular order. For me, having fun is the primary goal of my life, so it helps to have at least a mental list. At age 71 I could also list things that aren’t fun or aren’t as much fun as they once were. I try to avoid doing those things. I feel I’ve earned the right to avoid what I don’t like. Haven’t you?

I had an interesting experience just about a week ago. Elyn and I were sleeping out in our tent in the back yard since it was a hot night here in Santa Fe, NM. I had some trepidation about the tent, since I have a back that sometimes goes into spasm and the confined space of the tent was enough to set it off. I experienced a few seconds of pain so intense that the world stood still. When the spasm eased I felt a continuing low grade pain that was continuous. As the hours went by I noticed that I began to feel old and fragile. I began to narrow my focus down and try to get comfortable. Thoughts of travel and adventure seemed far in the distance and little by little I began to depress myself. Those feelings were familiar to me and I realized that I had experienced constant low grade pain for several years, but that I had been pain free for many months. When I was in pain, my world was shutting down little by little and when I was pain free it began to open up. My conclusion is that I can’t have fun if I’m depressed, so my job is to do what is necessary to achieve freedom from pain. When and if I can’t achieve that freedom, I’ll do whatever I can to minimize the pain and just realize that I will have a tendency to depress myself when I’m hurting. If I know what my tendency is I can hopefully deal with it and still have some fun. The point will be, perhaps freedom from pain is not something I’ll always be able to achieve, but I am in control of whether I depress myself about it.