Obsessed with Fun

Today, I'm feeling pensive. Maybe it's because it's the beginning of Holy Week, or maybe it's because I had two cups of coffee. It could be that I have too much time on my hands these days. I suppose the reason doesn't matter, but I find myself asking those troublesome questions that I spoke of in a blog post about a week ago.

Today, I'm wondering about our culture's questionable preoccupation with FUN. It's everywhere you look. Turn on the TV, and you'll see an ad about a beer that will supposedly help you have more fun than all the other beers you could drink. Drive down the highway, and you'll see billboards advertising travel agencies promising a fun getaway trip. Companies seem to be engaging in an endless search to find ways to make work fun for employees, instituting countless new programs to disguise the fact that work is being done in the workplace. Go to the car dealership, and you can watch a fun tv show while you wait for an oil change. (Don't even get me started talking about the idea that too many people can't sit still for an hour without watching television... That's another story for another time.)

Fun seems to be a priority. I know people who forego buying health insurance because they don't want to give up going out to movies or their daily cup of overpriced coffee. Many are constantly in search of a church that is fun and makes them feel warm and fuzzy inside. There are others who don't send their children to an adequate school because then, they might not have money for a fun summer vacation at the beach. Some children can barely find the motivation to learn because they'd rather be playing a fun videogame. Still others let their houses collect dust and their yards go unmaintained because housework and yardwork simply aren't fun.

I find myself fascinated by this, what I view as our culture's obsession with having fun. I wonder, where did this come from? Has this preoccupation always been so prevalent, or did a recent cultural shift play a role? How did we get to a point where we feel entitled not just to have basic human rights, but to live in a world that is fun as well? This viewpoint probably isn't popular with most people, but that's not my goal here. Now, I'm not arguing that life can't be fun or that fun is a terrible, evil sin. I'm just wondering, why do we feel entitled to have fun? When did we begin to think that hard work is something to be avoided? Fun has become an expectation that colors our daily living.

Perhaps this just wasn't the way that I was raised, or at least, it's not the way I've come to view the world. Personally, I expect that life is going to be hard work. I expect that I'm going to work to the best of my ability, and if fun happens to enter the picture, then that's fantastic! I'll soak up the fun when it happens to spontaneously enter my life, but I honestly don't think I seek out this fun. I prefer to be pleasantly surprised by it. Maybe that makes me boring, and maybe that labels me a borderline workaholic. You know what? I'm ok with that. That's who I am.