If I’m honest I’m somewhat suspicious of articles with headlines like Ready for the roaring 20s? It’s time to re-learn how to have fun, says happiness professor, as it appeared in The Observer a few weeks back. Apparently ‘the happiness professor’ is Laurie Santos who is a professor at Yale and who runs the university’s most popular course ever – Psychology and the good life. I remember ‘the good life’ it was a popular British sitcom and the state I used to aspire to in my retirement.
Anyway as I say I’m suspicious because, having carefully read the article, it seems to me that ‘having fun’ is simply the latest hook upon which people can hang their commercial ambitions. We’ve had stress, self-esteem, well-being, happiness and so on ad nauseum and now, fun.
So, approaching the article with caution, I thought nevertheless I should read it just in case something in there related to having fun in retirement. It might be that there were some possible lessons to learn in my on-going quest for a satisfying retirement. Probably not but you never know.
The article started thus, ‘the way to feel better lies in something called fun’. A focus on fun ‘helps prevent burnout … and also improves physical health’. Sounds good but I wasn’t sure what the difference between having fun and, say, happiness is. So I read more. Briefly, and I admit I’ve paraphrased here, it seems to be to do with trying new things. ‘True fun’ (as opposed presumably to false fun) has to be active; something to do with ‘a state of playful connections to flow’. No sorry lost me there. Apparently play and fun are closely connected. Something to do with being like a child but then as we’re retired I’m not sure of the relevance but read on.
But this is why the example the article gave of fun is playing sport (obviously they haven’t played sport like I have but no matter); going somewhere new. Hmm maybe. On to goofy something or other music moments in the car with friends. I think karaoke was mentioned. Doesn’t sound quite right for a retired person or this retired person at least. It mentioned connecting (presumably to other people). Not sure about this either. It goes on to say ‘if everybody prioritised fun, the world would be a happier, healthier and safer place’.
So not going well so far but maybe I could conduct a fun audit as recommended. Now this sounded quite incisive. But it turned out this amounted to no more than ‘identifying signs of yourself having true (that word again) fun’. Also keep a ‘fun times journal to identify moments of playfulness’ Then work out how much of these times you are having and write them down ‘as a narrative’(again not sure of the terminology does this simply mean as a story?). Rather lamely it ends with ‘next it’s time to find your fun’ which I suppose is code for do more of the things you have identified in your audit.
It may be well-intended and at a full page it certainly seems to be intended to be taken seriously but I have to say that in terms of the article itself I was a bit under-whelmed. So I did what I usually do at such times which is to ask myself if you like the basic idea (of having more fun) which I think I can safely say I do, then what would this actually mean for Mrs Summerhouse and myself in our retirement?
And here our results were about as modest as the article’s suggestions. First problem was distinguishing between enjoyment and fun and the second problem was answering the question does it really matter if I can’t make this distinction? And is retirement fun different to pre-retirement fun? But glossing over these semantics, our audit came to the conclusion that pretty much all of our enjoyment in our retirement lives revolve around food and drink (although I’m planning a steam train ride shortly but more of this in a later retirement blog). But overall, pretty much the opposite of what the article was recommending. Remember fun is supposed, by their definition, to be active, new and possibly sport-related.
Seems like our version might at best be new only because we occasionally force ourselves to eat and drink in a new pub. Since the dogs we don’t do restaurants so pubs it is. I suppose part of our problem is that most if not all of the activities that might very loosely be categorised as fun – playing jazz, writing a blog, tending a vineyard are more of a chore than fun. There’s always reading, we do a lot of that but while I would classify this as enjoyable I wouldn’t call it fun but then we’re back to the distinction I referred to earlier in this retirement blog.
I discussed this again with Mrs SH hoping she might have other ideas. And she revealed that while she would usually classify her art as enjoyable rather than fun as such, on one occasion during lockdown when she was working up in the attic where our old vinyl collection resides, she was indeed having fun and here’s the thing she was listening to old music, singing along and dancing. So maybe the article had a point.
Anyway that’s about as far as we got with this having fun in our retirement concept. So I throw this blog open to the floor so to speak. What do retired people do that can safely be regarded as fun?
what is happening