Monthly Musing – January 2017 – Fun fun fun

I’ve just looked back at my Monthly Musing for Januarylast year and it was all about taking care, and in particular, taking care of myself. It’s been something that I’ve thought about quite regularly over the year and of all the resolutions
I’ve ever had, I think this is the one that’s lasted the longest. I may not always have been great at it, but there’s always room for improvement whatever we do, and I’m happy to spend some more time working on it this year.

What I’m also going to do this year is have more fun. It feels a bit odd to write this, as if I’m sitting in a huge armchair somewhere saying, “Come on then, entertain me, make me laugh” but that’s not quite what I had in mind.

As a family, we had a lot of fun in the run up to Christmas and that’s when I realised that I don’t always stop to enjoy the moment as much as I should do. I smile a lot, but I don’t laugh as much as I probably should do, and you might feel that you are the same. After all, there’s a lot going on in the world that certainly isn’t fun and we might wonder if it’s right to be enjoying ourselves when others have it so much worse than us. But having fun isn’t just about going out to planned events, it’s about finding the fun in the moment. There are times when small daughter is reeling off bad joke after bad joke when it really doesn’t feel like fun at all, but I know there have also been opportunities when I could have stopped what I was doing for just a minute to laugh.

I’m not a fan of taking Bible quotations out of context, but these words came to me:

“When I became a man, I gave up childish ways”
(1 Corinthians, 13:11)

and made me wonder if we tend to associate fun with childhood and feel that it is incompatible with life in the Real World.
But why should fun be something that we watch our children do whilst we work around them, cooking, cleaning and earning a living? When was that moment that we became a Grown Up and we stopped giving ourselves permission to have fun? How many times have you said, “Oh, I used to love doing that” or “I used to play that game when I was little”? I’ve done it a lot recently. Why shouldn’t we still do these things? Yes, we have to work a bit harder to fit it in around the Grown Up stuff that we need to do, but isn’t it true that things you have to work for are all the more appreciated?

If I’m honest, the quotation from the Bible makes me feel a bit sad, although I know that Bible stories are often metaphors and not required to be taken literally. I don’t want to plan all my fun moments in advance with an appropriate entry on
the calendar. I need to remember that taking care of myself also means laughing more, and I’ve decided I’m going to use
this quotation as a reminder for the year instead:

“Adults are obligated to have fun so that children
will want to grow older”

Hobart Brown,1934-2007

Now isn’t that much more fun?

Happy New Year! xx

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12 Responses

  1. Christina says:

    I like that second quotation very much! I should probably have more fun in my life, too. Some of my happiest friends are those who laugh a lot and have plenty of fun and are generally a bit more chilled out than I am. I sometimes just don't have the energy to have fun… Happy New Year Christine! xx

    • Winwick Mum says:

      Yes, I do wonder whether we get caught up in all that we have to do sometimes – and whether we really need to do it all anyway. Of course, it's always easy to think that everyone else is always having a better time than us, so focussing on our fun is probably most important (and gets us out of more housework!) xx

  2. mazmama says:

    Happy New Year Christine to you and your family. I really have to make an effort to have fun – like you I wonder when and why that ability became such hard work!
    Resolution – don't think too much, just enjoy (hopefully)

  3. Sue says:

    I'm 58 today & the card from my daughter has the words "Growing old is unavoidable. Growing up is not!" I shall take this to heart I think.

  4. margaret says:

    Happy new year Christine and thank-you for that reminder. We have had our first grandchild recently and I intend to have a lot of fun!! xx

    • Winwick Mum says:

      Oh that's wonderful, congratulations! There's certainly going to be a lot of fun coming your way! xx

  5. Jo says:

    I think it's quite sad that life gets in the way of having fun sometimes. I think if we make more of an effort to have fun, we'll get in to that way of thinking and it will just become a way of life. You've made me think about this now too and I'm determined I'm going to have more fun in my life.

    • Winwick Mum says:

      I agree, fun should be a habit to make time for just like anything else – and it beats a lot of the other resolutions you could make at this time of year! xx

  6. Elizabeth says:

    Actually, St Paul said more about joy than anyone else in the New Testament – and he talked about knitting, too! (I'll leave you to check that one out!) He earned his living by sewing rather than knitting, of course, but hey, it's all textiles….

    • Winwick Mum says:

      Excellent, thank you! I will definitely check that out, it sounds like my kind of Bible verse! 🙂 xx

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