Fun – The Missing Link! – Institute for the Study of Man

My New Year reflections for 2016:

I remember the words “Do your homework – and THEN you can go and play!”… implication being that homework is NOT play! 🙁

So how can I bring back the fun into the process of my learning and not see fun as just entertainment?

How can I be spontaneous and child-like, but not be childish?

What if I place my focus on the en-joyment of a life of adventurous discovery, wonder and mystery?

What if I could get my friends to join me?

So today I appeal to the natural fun-loving ability of each one of you!

That sheer sense of exploration, curiosity about life, about the world we live in – and the natural phenomena that are busy expressing themselves all the time and that most of us take for granted.

I can say that I appeal to the child-like sense in each one of you!

A child, for me, is an image, a reflection, of the process of learning. Constantly curious, constantly exploring, never assuming, always experimenting, re-joy-sing in life!

A child is so spontaneous that the process of learning is never tiring.

What stands out with a child is how it uses fun to learn – a child learns by playing!

When we get older we lose this. We lose the natural fun ability – to use fun in the process of learning itself.

Then we want to BE entertained – from something outside of ourselves!

With this attitude, the fun is not lost but is turned into the want for entertainment. But what is the message here?

The subliminal message of fun that has become entertainment is quite simple – this is entertainment so you can relax into it because after that there is the boredom of your every day life all over again!

Do you see how this splits us in two?

Do you see how the real significance of having fun is lost in what is now escapism – and is called entertainment?

So the question for me is how to find this forgotten WELL!?

How to revive the natural process of learning where the fun has real meaning in playing the Game of Life?

The solution for me is simply: W.E.L.L. or:

Watch

Enjoy, experiment, explore

Listen

Learn

How do I apply this practically?

Here is an example of something seemingly simple – to some.

At the end of every month I need to do some accounting. It is not complicated, but it involves doing spreadsheets and repetitive doings. When I initially saw those spreadsheets I said to myself:

Oh my! Where is the fun in this?!

– and huge resistance kicked in! LOL!

So with my new W.E.L.L. approach, I started to watch and listen to myself, silently, and without judgment – and then started to experiment!

I did the spreadsheets in colours. I juggled with them. And so the fun began! But not fun as in “entertainment”, aka escapism! No! This was fun with a purpose – a purpose to learn about myself in the process of doing something that is not routine, but is also a necessity.

And during this process I was now natural-ly attentive – that mood of celebration that comes with the awareness of knowing something has a purpose to it!

It is really a new way of RELATING – to my self!

These days I find that when I accompany this mundane process with listening to Vivaldi or Mozart, it goes even better!

So I found the W.E.L.L. and I did well! 🙂

Well done, Onnik!

W.e.l.l., it all boils down to how I relate to Life, which includes mySelf too, of course.

But the key for me is to bring back the fun into the process of learning and not to use it as an entertainment! Or, in other words, to be spontaneous and child-like, but not childish.