Fun

We've been writing poetry in class lately, and I wound up writing this one, inspired by some of my students who don't "get" why we need to take some things seriously, and by news stories with the same theme.


Fun
Is a funny word.
Fun
Is in the eye of the beholder,
Fun
Comes in many forms.
And not all of them are really
Fun.
The vandals who spray-paint the murals downtown
And rip apart the playground equipment
Are having fun
Depending on how you define it.
They probably laugh hysterically.
The girls who point and laugh
At people to make themselves superior
Are having fun, too.
Laughter has its dark side too.
Is fun really fun
If it’s at someone else’s expense?
The distinctions can be more subtle.
It can be fun
To take something serious
And poke fun at it—
If the target is worthy of deflating.
Parody’s an honorable art.
And yet…
If all you can do is look at things and make fun of them
You lose the things themselves.
True parody entails affection for the thing itself.
But just making a joke out of things,
Having fun by laughing at worthy things
Rather than really experiencing them,
Appreciating them,
Feeling them in your soul
Is to lose the things themselves.
To say you just want to make things fun
When you are really making fun of things
Is to ruin things.
Holding the paddle over your head and trying to use it as a sail
May be fun, but it isn’t canoeing.
To have a food fight may be fun,
But it isn’t sitting down to a candlelight dinner and quiet talk.
To read a story and just to laugh at it
Isn’t the same as listening to, appreciating, and trying to understand a story
On all its levels
And letting it speak to you, make you think,
Change you.
But really taking the journey down the river is fun, too.
And so is the dinner conversation
And the story deeply felt.
Laughing at something is fun one way.
Really experiencing that thing is fun in another.
The real experience is the flow experience
Being into the thing itself
Getting out of the way
And appreciating something
Rather than pointing and laughing.
Taking something seriously doesn’t mean it can’t be fun
It means the fun is found in the flow, the focus,
The experience itself.
There is such a thing as serious fun.