Daily Om: Remembering Childhood Joys

Today's Daily Om is a reminder that fun is a choice - and as adults we too often get caught up in all of the responsibilities of being an adult and forget to have some fun. If you have kids, you get down to their level and play in the dirt, or color and draw with crayons, or watch cartoons. Even if you don't have kids, drawing and coloring can be fun, as is swinging on the swings at the park, or playing on the merry-go-round, or catching and releasing frogs in the local pond (if you live in a rural area), or playing in the fall leaves (like diving into the pile after you rake them up).

Whatever you enjoy, let yourself enjoy it.

Just for Fun

Remembering Childhood Joys

by Madisyn Taylor
October 19, 2014

Fun isn’t something that is given or done to you, it is something that you allow yourself to experience.

As adults, we often get so caught up in “grown up” business that we can forget how to have pure fun. This isn’t the kind of fun that comes from doing a specific kind of activity or being in a specific mood for fun. Rather, this is the fun born from the state of pure being. You see this kind of fun in small children who are so busy being fully present to their lives and in their own bodies that the glow of fun radiates from them just because they are alive: the delight that flashes across the eyes of a child who discovers that water flows with the turn of the tap knob or the squeal of pleasure from a young baby whose tongue is being tickled by cold ice cream; then there’s the full, infectious laughter of a child watching the same hat trick for the fiftieth time.

Back when we were children, this experience of pure delight didn’t have to come from a heightened, heady event in order for us to feel like our day had been made; and it can be that way for us again - if we are willing to remember and reconnect with that part of ourselves that knows how to be in the flow of fun. You can begin this process by reminiscing on what was fun for you as a child. Think about what caused you to giggle in delight or wriggle in pleasure or burst into endless laughter that you couldn’t sit up straight no matter how much you wanted to. Try to spend a few moments with each memory, and really feel what it was like to be in those experiences – allowing that feeling of pure fun to wash over you. It lives, in you – that feeling. It can’t be bottled, manufactured, or sold. You just have to call it back up in order to experience it again.

Pure fun happens when we are fully engaged with ourselves and our world in each moment. It is the spontaneous delight that bubbles out of us when we let go long enough to bring it through; it is the experience of natural, organic pleasure that springs up from our bellies, through our souls, up through our faces, and down to our toes. We’ve naturally known how to have pure fun since we were babies and the flicker of lights caused us to jump to attention from the sheer enjoyment of being able to see. Approach your life today with the knowledge that pure fun isn’t something that is given or done to you; rather, it is something that you allow yourself to experience.

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