(*and BTW, this post has a lotta-lotta links, so there are choices there as well!)

There’s just a zingle-bing-bang basket of choices both large and little in our life right now, am I wrong? From the jumbo-planetary (how best to help this globe?) to the eenie-day-to-day (what to watch now that all episodes of The Bear have been viewed?). And of course, for those living in the U.S., there is the big-E choice that is coming in 87 days (countdown from August 10, today) and all the trickle-down electoral moments attached to it.

There’s also currently a sense of joy that’s seeping up on a national level—at least among those I communicate with/read words by/feel a sense of same-kind(ness) ideology with—as a byproduct of a little something called hope, which is a sentiment I haven’t been altogether acquainted with in a news cycle until very recently. Yet other moments are trying to grab my attention as well. Turning to my left, I see Joy’s impish cousin Fun skipping around in circles. I haven’t checked in with that branch of the family in any sort of regularity in a very long time what with all the gnashing and worrying about jumbo and eenie choices that have thrown a weighted blanket over cousin Fun. Yet there they are, still hanging around, still available, still inviting.

And I’ll be honest, I haven’t invited Fun into my psyche to play because I’m terrified of what may happen. If I choose to give myself over to everything Fun has to offer: unabashed joyous laughter, endorphin-filled smiles, gut giggles, and heartwarming hoo-haw, then what? More specifically, then what do I do when it comes to an end? Have I been a fool? (Or made to look like a fool?) Will the comedown from Fun’s wonder be harder than if I’d never gone there to begin with? And, ultimately, why am I actually thinking about the end of Fun when it hasn’t even been allowed to begin?

D. introduced me to this podcast episode “Funology,” which I queued up and enjoyed (so so much! I really recommend it) and it blew my mind in a variety of ways. It’s not about Fun as a privileged concept that requires an elevation up&out of wherever you are to find it, or a place you’re born that can afford you the opportunity to escape into it. No, it’s a place we all have in us to visit. A choice to pay it some attention. Yesterday I spent some time watching the Olympics breaking competition and one b-girl in particular who stood in the cypher, which is the circle that breakers move inside of during their dance, was Manizha Talash, a young woman from Afghanistan who is competing on the Refugee Olympic Team. She was amazing both for her moves and her joy, which felt to me a mix of living in the fullness of a sport that can elicit fun, along with a poignancy of the challenges she’s seen and lived outside the circle of her break dance community. (An aside: Manizha feels a particularly potent example of the spirit in which breaking was born, and given the debate around how its entry into the Olympics shifts the gaze from its cultural and historical importance to becoming a global, er, consumer moment, I think she’s a particularly apt presence. For more on how this dance/competition came out of early 80s Bronx, when that neighborhood was literally burning, there’s this.)

So, where does Fun live? Where has it gone or rather why has it seemed to have receded so far into the corners of my life? In the podcast, Catherine Price, the guest and author of The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again. talks about how when we’re wee little folx we haven’t yet been introduced to reasons NOT to have fun. In other words, the filter hasn’t yet been gunked up with too much life experience (pain, loss, sadness). Obviously the timing of that gunk-up varies given the actual place and circumstances in which you’re born. (See: Goddamn globe, so much heaviness.) But speaking personally, yes, I can remember the time in my life when I began to think Wait. This isn’t fun anymore. And, no surprise, it was the inciting, informing incident in pretty much every moment from then on and is the endless conversation I have with my therapist. Yet. AND. Yet. I really can decide to step outside of this turning point and realize that while that looking-glass moment reflected back some things I couldn’t quite understand or deal with and that 100% defined me as all those kinds of moments in all people’s lives do, I am still living with this self-same soul, body, personality, and choice. This means I can have the courage to set down that extra-heavy bag of Somber trix and invite Fun to play. Do some emotional hopscotch and cartwheels … i mean, in no universe have I been able to physically do a cartwheel but yet I always laugh a lot when I try.

During the year I was really day-to-day taking care of my dad, I lost Fun altogether in the crowd of Worry, Self-doubt, Sadness, Confusion. And that was a shame because my dad was a damn fun guy. There were times even then when we’d invite some semblance of Fun to join in and, as I remember it, the moments happened when he was watching D&I enjoy something: watching a soccer game, having a particularly rapid-fire Elaine May/Mike Nichols back&forth about something or other. This was a lovely time. A very important piece of the Fun puzzle I want to remember above all else: no matter the particulars of life, there is a place and a need to lighten and lift above. I wish I’d been more present to that with him, but yet this is where Regret, that big bully, is trying to push in and today I’m not opening the door. I’m aiming to choose Fun. To choose Kindness. To choose Joy and Hope. Even if in moderation, bringing the whole Happy family together can only make for a better life meal. If you don’t have time to listen to the whole Funology episode, I highly recommend fast-forwarding to 1:19:00 for a really amazing point Catherine makes about our proclivity to avoid Fun and what that can mean psychologically.

So there ’tis, I’m off to let Fun mow the lawn for me. And here’s to wishing all of you a Fun moment (or string of ’em) today!