Fun

Yesterday the weather was welcome, sunny and pleasant.  My family and I were like puppies yapping to get outside.  Sure, we had a lot to do to be ready for the upcoming week:  work and school projects, grocery shopping, laundry, a myriad of responsibilities could be listed.  But, we went outside and played.  Soccer balls tucked in elbow pits, sneakers laced tight we walked down the street to a school’s practice fields to kick and run and use our outside voices.  The afternoon got me thinking about fun.

Fun defines as follow from the Collins English Dictionary 10^th edition:

            1.  a source of enjoyment, amusement, diversion, etc.
            2.  pleasure, gaiety, or merriment
            3.  jest or sport (esp. in the phrases in fun or for fun)
            4.  facetious, ironic amusement, frivolous activity (fun and games)
            5.  to ridicule or deride (make fun of, poke fun at)

Planning the New Year and its goals I may have lost track of the need for fun.  Today I’m wondering about ways to have more enjoyment and amusement, pleasure, gaiety and merriment.  I’m not interested in poking fun; deriding others is decidedly NOT fun (particularly if you are the recipient).   I feel a longing for frivolous activity. 

I made a list of things I used to do for enjoyment:  spicy cooking, meandering mall shopping, late-night dancing, spontaneous road trips, canoeing, gorging myself at a pizza buffet.  These things are no longer right for me because the circumstances of my life have changed.  Most of the list requires me to have only my own agenda and time schedule to work with and a younger more tolerant body.

Fun may have changed over the years.  But, if I’ve tossed the old scenario of fun, have I replaced it with different amusement?  Even if fun now includes being in bed by 10:00pm, I still need to find it.  I may even need to plan it because I’m no longer a lone star but part of the constellation of a family with young kids.   I need a list of replacements I can do for enjoyment:  spicy carryout, card games, planned family trips, Saturday afternoon Dance Central, reading alone in my room, lunch with a friend. 

Sometimes my sense of responsibility overrides my feeling of wanting fun.  Do I need a clean toilet MORE than I need fun?  Sometimes.  But having paid no attention to fun I find myself feeling serious and in a slump, moody and down even when presented with the glory of a pristine potty.  I’m dismayed by how little time I invest in fun. 

Turns out that even though we spent the afternoon doodling around a soccer field, there was time for playful puppies to get school things in order, finish presentations, push laundry to the next day, skip the grocery store and eat whatever was around for dinner, fall into a heap and sleep soundly all night.  I want more fun in the future.

Courage

I remember sixth grade:  chilly school football games, first unrequited crush, the social gauntlet of the hallway.  I’m preparing for middle school again because my oldest child completes fifth grade this year.  What I’m thinking about as I read forms about schedules, tours, electives, and class placements is courage.   

The website I’m using for definitions, dictionary.com also lists entries from HarperCollins World English Dictionary 10^th edition.  I noticed an interesting difference when I looked at the first entry under each source. 

Dictionary.com:
1. the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc. without fear; bravery
2.  (obsolete)  the heart as the source of emotion
3.  to act in accordance with one’s beliefs, esp. in spite of criticism.

Collins English Dictionary:
1.  the power or quality of dealing with or facing danger, fear, pain, etc.
2.  the confidence to act in accordance with one’s beliefs
3.  to nerve oneself to perform an action
4.  (obsolete)  mind; disposition; spirit

Is courage the ability to face daunting situations without fear or the power to deal with fear and danger and pain?  It seems odd to choose sides in a comparison of definitions, but I’m going with Collins on this one.  My instinct says there will always be fear, but in the meeting of things despite fear, we find courage.  Courage permits us to confront uncertainties, difficulties or dangers even while in possession of dread or panic or nerves.  Certainly a soldier cannot enter into battle without fear.  Firefighters and EMT’s save lives every day by facing danger and fear.  These honorable callings put people who choose these careers in constant use of courage.  But, even in less life threatening daily personal activities we need courage.  We cannot face a tough interview without fear but with nerve to perform.  Despite trepidation we can teach difficult students, choose to answer truthfully personal questions, leave an unhealthy relationship, move to another state because we have the quality of dealing with or facing the risk, fear, or pain.  A parent can enter into middle school again vicariously through a child with some small bit of fear and optimistic courage!

Another tidbit I loved in the Online Etymology Dictionary was the origin of the word “courage” from Latin cor (“heart”).  It feels right that the origins of courage are in the heart, a place also named as a source for love.  Perhaps the roots of courage are in love – healthy self-love that teaches us we are worthy, strong and capable.  Deep within ourselves we find the ability to act in confident accordance with our beliefs in spite of criticism and power to deal with life’s difficulties bravely.

Resolute

We have marched half way through the first month of 2011.  I notice New Year’s resolutions being offered up as a way to sell us things ranging from fast food to athletic shoes.  Interesting, our desire to be resolute is a way to vend goods.

Dictionary.com offers the following definitions for resolute.

1.  firmly resolved or determined; set in purpose of opinion
2.  characterized by firmness and determination, as the temper, spirit, actions, etc.
3.  firm in purpose or belief; steadfast
4.  characterized by resolution; determined (a resolute answer)

Certainly the goals we set each New Year mean something to us.  The supposed slate clearing opportunity inspires us to dig deep into what is important.  Or do we set goals we really don’t like because we feel it’s expected?  These are goals that may fail. 

Resolutions must be attainable, simple and they must MATTER to us.  We cannot count on will power alone to push us through things that have no meaning to us.  Will power is not guaranteed to be steadfast nor firmly resolved.  Stress will kill will power in a skinny minute and over the years I have hidden empty packages from more than one bag of sweet sixteen powdered donuts to prove it. 

If stress or circumstances (illness, bad weather, whatever it might be) derail our plan, we get back on track and keep going if the goal really matters to us.  If we are firm in purpose or belief, set in purpose of opinion about something we do not toss it aside even if we fail to rise to its heights one day.    

Being resolute alone sucks.  Sometimes we need friends who will take a walk with us to meet our daily exercise goal, offer us unsweetened tea while we give up sugar, will sit and chat as we nervously wait at the DMV to earn a driver’s license, will remind us in a social situation that alcohol is not what makes us cool, will answer our call when we need to talk about a day in which we failed to do what we intended or celebrate our success.  Sometimes we need to be that friend for someone else.  

Today America honors a resolute man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  His words make me wonder, “How does being resolute reflect the content of my character?”  Maybe our resolutions are not as lofty as Dr. King’s and our marches may be more personal than public.  They still move us toward positive change.  Building a strong self and supporting others as we become improved people requires us to indeed be resolute. 

Forge

Who wants to be the word that follows fabulous?  It’s not unlike discovering minutes before you go on stage for a school talent show, clasping your flute in sweaty hands, that the act before you is a dance team in sparkly, skin-tight leotards and pompom boots thrusting to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”  But go on we must to another word I’m mulling in 2011, forge.

Dictionary.com listed ten meanings. 

·         form by heating and hammering; beat into shape

·         to form or make, esp. by concentrated effort

·         to imitate (handwriting, a signature, etc.) fraudulently

·         to commit forgery

·         to work at a forge

·         (of a horse at a trot) to strike the forefeet with the shoes of the hind feet

·         a special fireplace, hearth, or furnace in which metal is heated before shaping

·         the workshop of a blacksmith; smithy

·         to move ahead slowly; progress steadily

·         to move ahead with increased speed and effectiveness

I’m not thinking of forge as a follower of the word fabulous but a partner for my 2011 theme. 

Why would fabulous need forge?  Because in life’s day to day theater the brilliant flash of fabulous might be daunting.  But not with the solidity of forge.  We can forge the seemingly unbending raw material life offers and pound it into a shape that serves us.  The metal might be our work, our health, our relationships, our finances, our attitudes.  Even steel will bend under the right circumstances.  Certainly this takes concentrated effort and work.  Not only does forging give us the ability to craft our lives into something we can work with, it allows us to be the very heat needed to do so.  We, the fabulous, embrace slow steady progress and periods of increased speed and effectiveness.

What of the fraudulent signature?  When fabulous feels far away we can imitate another person, “signing their name” to draft out of their fabulousness when ours is feeling depleted.  Faking fabulous never hurts if we are attempting to copy qualities of someone wealthy in fabulousness.  Teachers, spiritual leaders, grandparents, ancient writers, friends - people worthy of emulation abound and seeking them out is essential.  To copy a little fabulous is better than giving up on it altogether!  Fraud has a negative subtext but we can imitate someone without claiming their character.  We certainly should not attempt to assume the traits of another person with deceitful or deceptive intent.  We are not stealing identities but merely impersonating qualities we intend to manifest in ourselves, more practice than pretense.

Cheers for forging fabulous!

Fabulous

Now that 2011 has arrived perhaps your life feels a little like mine.  Kids return to school, vacation days are used, cookies are no longer an acceptable breakfast food, routine hours of daily operation resume.  As the pinball action of holiday time with flashing lights and sounds fades into memories of ricocheting from celebration to celebration, as the darkness recedes and the light grows through winter into spring, there is newness in the journey.  

Each new year I establish an annual theme.  I can’t recall what began the habit but it is a tradition I love.  Replacing punitive actions I’m going to undertake, a theme shapes the year and still allows for self improvement where needed.  I start ruminating just after Thanksgiving and let thoughts percolate like Grandma’s old coffee amongst smells of sugar cookies and evening fires until the scattered grounds coagulate into an idea declared January 1.  A cup containing “fabulous” brewed for 2011. 

Fabulous seems the perfect word to begin this blog in which I turn to my favorite toys, the dictionary and thesaurus, to look at common words and see where they lead me for the week. 

Fabulous has four meanings listed on dictionary.com

1.  almost impossible to believe
2.  exceptionally good or unusual
3.  told about in fables
4.  known about only in myths or legends

So, let’s begin 2011 declaring ourselves fabulous.  Note there is not a hint of “perfect” or “flawless” in the definition.  I certainly am neither of those – nor do I want to be (impossible goals are just a drag).  But fabulous, that sounds fun!  And aren’t we already fabulous?  Tell me that you and I don’t fall into some section of that definition?  Someone somewhere has told a story about each of us that is legendary – our parents, school friends, our children?  And by our merely being created we are all exceptionally good or unusual! 

We can all be fabulous together and no one has to be “Fabulous the Greater” or “Fabulous the Lesser” because fabulous is neither finite nor measured in comparisons.  Who doesn’t want to live as a fabulous person in a world full of the mutually fabulous?  We don’t do things to get fabulous; we are fabulous so we do certain things.  We should take care of our bodies, nurture our souls, sharpen our minds, do the best job we can do at whatever we do today, rest when we need it, care for the earth and each other.  Why?  Because we are fabulous!