At the end of last week’s post I asked,
Do you think we should stop being playful and silly as we get older?
Looney answered,
I love and cherish the fun part, but can never truly give up being an adult. It seems to me that fun is neither a virtue nor a vice in itself. To the extent we are caught up in duties, it can be a tool to be used selectively for a purpose, such as you do with your cartoons, but is this truly being childlike, or merely pretending?
I’ve been thinking of that a lot this week. I don’t think of “fun” as a virtue. Neither do I think of it as a tool for a purpose. In fact I don’t use the term very often, because I don’t always enjoy what other people think of as fun.
I’m more apt to use the terms “being silly”. It comes from an Old English word for happiness, with connotations of innocence. Unfortunately it also has connotations of foolishness, a weakness of intellect. For me being silly is being overcome by joy and delight in simply being alive. It’s the opposite of worldliness and sophistication. It doesn’t happen all of the time, of course, but it does happen surprisingly often when my life is on the right track. In fact, those spells of silliness let me I know if I’m on the right track.
Mostly I share those spells only with my family and close friends because there are those connotations of foolishness and weakness of intellect. The main reason for last week’s post was to say, no, valuing silliness is not necessarily the same as being stupid. 🙂
What do you think?
I love to feel silly. But today was the worst. I’ll be like Ursula & won’t say why. Then I’d be whiney. I think I can force myself to be silly for the rest of the evening. If I stay up so late that I’m punchy, I can be silly & without any beer. How can anyone like beer it’s so bitter?
Here’s something funny. My grandson is in France. His best friend & father are visiting. This boy was in a school, kindergarden through 5th grade (just finished 6th grade) where French was the only language spoken. So he’s pretty fluent in French.
Here’s the punch line. They are all traveling around France, but he’s only interested in staying in the room creating computer games with the program “Gamemaker”. They make him go out. Hahahahehe
I think it’s natural to be less playful and silly as one gets older. That doesn’t necessarily make it wrong to be playful and silly, just less acceptable by those who aren’t — which just happens to be most (older) people.
🙂 I also spent more time considering my comment after I had written it than before! A few nights ago my brain was muddled from reading too much, but wasn’t ready to sleep, so I turned on the TV just in time to get the famous quote from Men In Black:
“No maam, we here at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we’re aware of.”
You could write a book on this subject!
Did you notice any difference in the sense of humor between Europe and America?
bikehikebabe,
I actually like the taste of beer. But I don’t like the effect of alcohol so when I indulge I drink O’Doul’s.
I think the behavior of the boy isn’t that unusual for that age. Who would want to go sightseeing with the old folks when he could do something fun?
Mike,
I was fairly serious for a while when I was in high school…until I made a conscious decision in my senior year to lighten up. So maybe I just did things in a backwards order. It has worked well for me.
Looney,
“No maam, we here at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we’re aware of.” I love it! Every time I read your comment I smile.
I didn’t notice much of a difference in the sense of humor between Europe and America. But that may very well be because my language skills weren’t that good. 🙂
We can become easier and less formal as we get older. I like people like that…
gaelikaa,
I agree! Life is too short to hide behind social masks.
Once a upon time…I had a difficult few decades and I adopted rather strange colourful clothing. I never really thought about it until after that difficult period was over and friends kept saying “I wish you would go back to those strange clothing combinations, as you’ve gone all serious”
Apparently, they were always interested in what combination I had on at any one time.
I would have a pair of red shoes on with a green striped trousers with a yellow/white/pink polka dot t-shirt – oh the socks would be different as well…
What actually occured at home was the way I arranged clothing…there was no wardrobe space for me – I just piled the clean clothes up AND then in the morning in the dash to be out: selected from the top! Never had time to see what colour/combi was on 🙂
The same thing happened when I shopped for clothes – I would see something that looked ‘happy’ and would buy it! Hence the strange colour dress-up mode.
Now I’m a Jeans and navy Jumper during the winter and Jeans and t-shirts summer. I always wear the same black lace up walkiing boots (because I have a ankle/balance problem) – I rarely wear a dress/skirt or even shorts! Just the way things are right now..
however, last summer I gave some of my t-shirts embellishments which shocked some of my newer friends (not the ones from before!)
now that I’m home alone I do some ‘silly’ things from time to time – because no one can see me! 😉 😉
Cathy,
Good for you for buying happy clothes when you were going through a hard time! Right now I’m like you…I have a simple wardrobe so I can spend my time on things that I’m more interested in. And a good deal of my silliness is done in private. No sense letting wet blankets get in the way. 😉
I would prefer to use the word “joyful”.
If it works for you, go for it. 🙂