He stood, stooped and bent, and leaning on a walking stick. A whimsical smile played around the corners of his mouth and a plaid fedora sat jauntily on his head. He chuckled, watching his grandson load six paddleboards atop the roof of a Ford Expedition. He shuffled a few feet toward them as daughter and grandson hefted a kayak to the top of her Rav4. “What a lot of work,” he commented, “for a little bit of fun.”

Had it been fun? Yes! 90 minutes on a sundrenched lake in the waning days of summer. Bliss. Beauty. Invigoration. Was it work? Undeniably, yes. She had driven two and a half hours from Durango and past Telluride just to spend a couple hours with her grown son, her aging father, her four grandkids, her daughter-in-law and the DIL’s parents – a standard, but all too infrequent meet-up in the gorgeous mountains of Colorado. Was it worth it? Isn’t fun always worth it? A day spent on the water is soul nourishing. Yet a spontaneous meet-up is very rare amidst responsibilities and work commitments. 

Fun seems so expensive in the day-to-day rush. Fun costs time. Fun costs effort.

If we are not careful, somewhere around the age of 25 we lose our grip on fun. We are too exhausted to go the extra mile for recreation, and we feel duty bound to do the unfun tasks first. Unless of course we have doctor’s orders to run every morning – or hike – or go for a swim – or sit in the sun! Then we can take our recreation like a pill, mark it off the list like a chore and not feel guilty about recreating.,  

She remembers fun when she was young and tagging along with her parents. They were youth sponsors in the local church. Having barely grown into adulthood themselves, they remembered how to plan fun activities. Youth get togethers, being church sanctioned, were obviously for the glory of God so copious amounts of time were spent lavishly decorating spook houses, bobbing for apples or taking a moonlit hayride. Likewise, church picnics could rightly be considered obligations. No amount of effort was too great to shlep the ice chest of cold fried chicken and potato salad to the group picnic site or to set up the volleyball net or horseshoe pit. But her understanding, her unspoken training, her unconsciously formed opinion was that personal recreation is selfish, self-centered, and therefore ungodly.

Here’s a newsflash: some people garden for fun. It is true! Also true that some garden to survive and it becomes acknowledged, hard work. But garden hobbyists, they work long hours, bending, stooping, hauling and they exude enjoyment.

Some people fish. For fun! Not for food. They rise before dawn and move silently to the river. They stroke and cast and stroke and cast and sometimes they catch. And then they release. For fun. Just for fun. They are home in time for breakfast – before the sun blazes over the one remaining mountain. 

Her perspective throughout early adulthood was that fun was expensive; a luxury, forbidden fruit, pleasure to be quaffed only when every other self-sacrifice had been performed to generate income. Now she knows that fun itself may take a copious amount of effort. She must be content to embrace that work, those duties, and then luxuriate in the fun – reap the benefits of rejuvenation!