My book explores all sorts of dimensions of the "well lived life" but I wonder from time to time whether I overplayed or underplayed some dimension. "What about fun?" I sometimes wonder. I explore mortality at great length, the importance of caring about the world beyond ourselves, and other "heavy" issues. But I admit there are very few lines about finger-painting, decorating cookies, jumping into piles of leaves, and the like.
Somebody might think I'm fun-challenged, but it's not true. Just yesterday, I actually had some fun! I was with my two kids at my daughter's violin lesson and her teacher, a very accomplished violinist, was playing a gorgeous piece for us. It happens her family has a pet bird and a tiny dog. Now, I don't mean some exotic bird like the one in my new header. I mean a little brown bird like you might see sitting on a branch outside your window. As she played, the little yapping dog chased the bird around the room. He flew every which way and finally took refuge on my head. It was fun, not to mention funny.
Do we have to have fun? Could a life be entirely good if it included lots of happiness, but no fun? Uh oh...maybe I really am fun-challenged, because now I've turned a moment of just plain fun into a serious question.
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Speaking of fun, Mark Vernon wrote a nice review of my book in Church Times. He calls it "warm and lucidly written." I'm starting to think that quite possibly the book actually is lucid and warm, because Stephen Poole used the same adjectives in The Guardian. Now if someone would just say--"this book is really fun."
Rainbow lorikeets! If anything could be better than rocks, it would be rainbow lorikeets. (Noisy as neighbours in real life, though).
ReplyDeleteFun. I said I was going to post about fun some weeks ago, didn't I. Och.
Now you can see what an "animal expert" I really am. My brother took a picture of these birds in a zoo in Australia (they were free-range, not part of the zoo). I thought "parrots" (isn't any colorful bird a parrot?).
ReplyDeleteFun is good. (Wise, huh?)
Fun is good. That's one big reason I would hate the Taliban even if they were sweet to women and peaceful as doves - because they make fun illegal (which rather cuts against the peaceful as doves part, since when they say illegal they're not kidding). They banned jokes, music, and kites.
ReplyDelete