098 - Fighting for Fun
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Show Notes:
I was talking with a friend the other day and she asked me the question, what are you fighting for this year? And it took me a minute to answer her, but after a pause, I finally said, “You know, I think I'm fighting for fun.” I know that might sound trite or silly, but I'm realizing it's—it's not that silly, it's actually necessary.
Especially in this pandemic with the political stress and all the responsibilities of daily life, I'm realizing this year, I'm going to fight for fun. And she responded. She said, that is not trite or silly at all. That's so important. And I'm so thankful she asked me that question because it made me really kind of get that in perspective this year and so this year, that's what I'm doing!
I'm fighting for fun in my life.
And honestly, I hope you'll join me.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below!
Listen, You know, the name of this podcast is work and play with Nancy Ray. And I want you to know that I'm fully aware my content is not 50 50 split on topics that cover work half the time and play half the time. In fact, I realize I lean kind of heavy on the work side because so much of our life is made up of work.
And to be honest, I'm an Enneagram 3. I really enjoy work. I love setting goals and accomplishing them, even in my home life. I feel like I'm a little bit bent towards doing things and working and in a way it's fun and playful for me to do a job and do it well because it's fulfilling, but there is this other part of our lives and of my life, and I'm realizing that's just so important. It often gets overlooked. It's not talked about, and it's simply play the play part of our lives, the fun, the letting go and letting loose and laughing and doing things without any kind of goal or end in mind.
Just to be clear on what play is, I'm going to define it. And there's actually a lot of different definitions of play, which is pretty interesting. You should look it up, but in a nutshell…
play is something that is imaginative, it's, self-directed, it's intrinsically motivated and guided by rules that leave room for creativity. It's a non-stressed out frame of mind. And usually you're more focused on the means rather than the end.
And this is important for me to realize as someone who's very goal oriented, I focus on the end. I focus on the goal. I focus on getting there as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Play is the opposite of that. Play focuses on the process and enjoying the journey, as so many people say it's not just the end goal. So just to kind of boil it down and keep this very basic. I just want to tell you why I believe that came to my mind.
When my friend asked me, “What am I fighting for this year?” I think it came to my mind specifically because right now we can't control what's happening in our world. I cannot control this pandemic. I can't control the stress of politics right now in America. The things that feel so big and heavy, that affect our lives, but are kind of outside of the reach of what we can do.
But I realized, even though there's this heaviness, and even though there are days where I succumb to that and feel dark and sad and anxious—I can still control some things. And one of those things as a mom of three little kids is I can control fun.
I can create fun and adventure for me and my family.
I can only control what I can control, but that I can still make this year joyful and happy and full of really sweet memories. My friend, Emily Thomas, who has been on this podcast before sent me this email with a link to a New York Times article all about play. And she said as an avid work and play listener, I thought you would really enjoy this, and it's been sitting in my inbox for a while, but I got back to it and read it. And I just thought, this is, so this is so perfect. This is so timely. And the article opened by saying:
“At a time when jobs are precarious, livelihoods are at stake and we're still fighting. A deadly pandemic play is low on our list of priorities. We're living in a world that's more conducive to anxiety than playfulness. In the never ending to do of adulthood, play can feel like a waste of time. We exhaust ourselves with tasks we should do or have to do, but we rarely have time or energy for activities we want to do. Play offers a reprieve from the chaos. And it challenges us to connect with a key part of ourselves that gets lost in the responsibilities of adulthood, especially during a crisis. Play feels silly, unproductive, and time-consuming, but this is precisely why we should make more time for it.”
I'm going to leave the link to that New York times article in the show notes because it's worth the read. It's so good. And it covers a lot of things. I'm not going to be able to cover in today's podcast episode, like different ways we play and kind of how we like to play and a lot of us play differently, but it's worth reading and exploring. And there's a couple other quotes I'm going to pull from it today. But I really, this just validated me as I was reading it. You know, it says, it feels, it can feel like a waste of time. We have so many things to do. We exhaust ourselves with all those things to do.
I think that's why when I responded to my friend, like, I feel like it's trite or silly to say that I'm going to fight for fun this year. I'm going to fight for adventures in play this year. It felt kind of silly to say that because: what's the end goal there?
Well, there's not really an end goal. It's just to enjoy life more.
But I think we are craving that and needing that right now in the world we live in. So we can't control anything big or heavy around us, but we can control the tone that we set in our homes with our families and with our closest relationships.
Another reason I am fighting for fun this year is Proverbs 17:22 says “a cheerful heart is good medicine.”
There are so many different things in the Bible that talk about being cheerful, being joyful. Obviously, joy is one of the fruits of the Spirit and Nehemiah 8:10 says “The joy of the Lord is our strength.”
And I know that's not talking about having fun or planning, silly things with your family, but at the same time, I think that it's worth noting that yes, as a believer, joy comes from this deep well, within that, no matter what is going on around us or what trials we face or the heaviness that we feel, we can still pull from that deep well in the Lord and walk in that joy.
And it's okay as a Christian to have fun! I think when you look at the Bible, you look at these themes, like even in the old Testament, there is this year of Jubilee. There are so many festivals that the Lord commanded for believers to partake in, in the Old Testament. And then of course, there's the Sabbath, which is all about enjoying rest, enjoying the Lord, enjoying each other.
I think God just knows that we have this natural bent to work, to achieve, to perform, to “do” because it makes us feel good about ourselves. And it's, that works based nature mindset that kind of, we all come into life with thinking that we can earn our way into things, but God is saying all throughout scripture: just be joyful. A cheerful heart is good medicine. Let loose a little bit.
There's this quote that I love from the Celebration of Discipline, which is a book we read last year in my book club. You can go back and listen to my podcast episode on that book in episode 91. But the quote says this the most important benefit of celebration is that it saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. He says of all the people we as believers, we should be the most free, alive, and interesting celebration adds a note of gaiety, festivity and hilarity to our lives.
And I love that because I will be the first to admit that I think deeply about things. I carry things. I take myself way too seriously. Thank goodness God has given me three children because they helped me not take myself as seriously. My husband, Will, and I we've been way more goofy and laid back since we have become parents.
But, you know, I think it's important to step back and take a look at the Bible and what the Bible says about how we should live and who we should be. And there is just this big emphasis on rest and on being cheerful and joyful. Really, we should be so alive. So free. And sadly, I think today, people look at Christians as pretty rigid and pretty, I don't know self-centered or not free, not as alive, but more legalistic.
We should be the opposite!
We should have so much fun. We should have just like this quote says of all people, we should be the most free, alive, and interesting, having festivity and celebration and hilarity. Like all of those things, we should be able to laugh and just know that our eternity is secure.
So that's just something I've kind of been pondering as I've been thinking about fighting for fun this year, it's even biblical in the sense that we should just fight to be these free people that love life, even while it feels like the world is caving in around us.
I went on a retreat last year with some friends and we laughed so hard. I mean, we do this every year. We just get away. We leave all the kids at home. We talk about our work, our businesses, we talk about life. We just kind of process things together. But most of all, we play games and we laugh so hard. And I just, I never forget the end of those weekends. When I come home, I feel so refreshed and so alive. And so like these burdens have just been lifted off my shoulders. And I think it's because it's like a free pass to just not take myself too seriously and just to have fun, and it really has shown me over the years, the importance of friendship, of laughing, and really planning that time to have fun.
Fighting for fun means planning for it. So two ways I'm going to do this this year:
#1: planning fun events!
First, I'm really going to plan some fun events. I'm going to plan, make sure that retreat happens again. I'm going to go hiking with friends on the weekends. I hope to at some point plan, some sort of murder, mystery dinner party, like a couples dinner party to have people over to our house to get dressed up, to do this murder mystery, just to be silly and have fun. And then at the end of the night, watch that movie “Knives out,” which it's such a great movie, by the way, it's like a murder mystery. It's kind of intense, but I just thought it was really well done.
I want to get creative with date nights with Will, I just want to do more fun things. You know, we live in Raleigh, North Carolina. I feel like there's so many things. Raleigh offers that we've never taken advantage of. Even though we were both born and raised here.
I want to celebrate milestones in a big way. Birthdays, anniversaries, you know, retirements, whatever's happening in our family babies. I, I want to celebrate big.
I want to encourage our kids to come up with performances on the weekends. You know, let's do a Frozen I, Frozen II performance. Let's have a princess dance party.
Let's do special date nights where daddy can take the girls out individually and I can even take Beaufort out and we can get dressed up and do individual little dates with our kids, like all these little things that we can plan and we can do to fight for fun in our lives.
#2 : Making our daily lives more fun
But the second way I'm going to do this. Other than planning, these big events is: I'm just going to try to make our daily lives more fun.
You know, Sally Clarkson has, she's an author podcast, Sarah mentor. She has taught me that as a mother, I have the gift and the ability to set the tone for our home and our family. And kids, you know, what language kids speak? They speak in play. Like if you get down and play with them, they open up. They it's like the way they communicate as children. It's so important for kids. And I'm just going to try to plan more moments of fun and play throughout our days.
That New York Times article says,
“Of course, most of us don't feel like we have the luxury of a bunch of free time. It's hard to find extra time in our already packed schedules.”
In that case, this article recommends finding quick opportunities to play throughout the day. It could be dancing in the kitchen while you cook them or reading something that makes you laugh while you're in the grocery line, belting out a song during your drive, home finding little moments of play. And that I think it's such a good reminder that we can really plan play into our days. It's not work and play and that most of our days are work. And then we have to plan these excursions for play. No, it's all kind of intertwined. We can fight for fun in our work and we can look for little ways to play in our homes.
One thing that we do as a family, we've just started doing this. It's so fun. It’s, as soon as dinner is over, we try to get all the kids to help us clear the table, which feels like it takes forever with, you know, a five-year-old, three-year-old and a two-year-old, but we get them to help us take the dishes over to our sink.
And then we start to play the Trolls soundtrack. It is the best family dance party music. And so of course, Trolls is blasting in the background and we're all dancing and it is pure chaos. I mean, it's, it's chaos. Usually it's like someone falls down or we trip over a kid, but usually we're laughing and dancing and singing. And we do this while we're picking up all of the food off the ground and, you know, rinsing off the plates to go in the dishwasher and it's really helped us clean up the kitchen quickly and involve the kids, make it not seem like a chore. And it's really fun, so I'm just trying to look for little things like that, that we can do every day.
The last thing I just wanted to share as I'm fighting for fun and play in my life this year, that really stood out to me in that article I keep talking about is the importance of not sharing about it.
It says “It's very important that we have some moments of play all for ourselves that we don't tell anyone about and we don't post about. Whether it's kneading dough in the kitchen or riding your bike around the neighborhood. The next time you do something fun, don't share it. Don't share the activity online. This can help you focus on the pure joy of doing something fun for yourself.”
I thought that was so wise because a lot of times it feels like if we don't share this thing that we're doing, like isn't validated or isn't real, and maybe you don't feel that way. Maybe you're off social media, maybe this doesn't apply to you and that's totally fine. But for me, I just think it's validating and a good reminder: I don't have to share everything.
In fact, it's more beneficial if I don't, because it's just tucked away in my heart. For me, it's just for our little family.
So even though there's so much heaviness in our lives, it's worth it to fight for fun and play.
Let's belly laugh this year.
Let's have board game nights
Let's get outside.
Let's go camping.
Let's create homemade adventures for no one else to see or enjoy, but us.
It is worth fighting for.
