Fun is More Vital Than Ever
photograph by Carlos del Junco
by Celia McBride
Having fun yet?
I first heard this expression when I was eighteen and had moved back to the Yukon, my birthplace, for a gap year. “Having fun yet?” (along with “Give ‘er” and “Git ‘er done”) was a popular idiom used by hard-working locals to keep things light and moving in that remote, wilderness city.
These days, the question burns. Having fun yet? Not really. Everyone and everything seems to be in a state of war. Fun seems frivolous at best, offensive at worst. The world is on fire and you’re watching “Golden Girls”? Well, yes, I am. Because the darker things are, the more light we need. In the midst of all this madness, fun is more vital than ever.
As a spiritual director, I provide accompaniment in a long-term care facility, which doesn’t sound like a lot of fun but I assure you it can be. Laughter is good medicine and when a person has been stripped of everything – their home, their partner, their family, and their stuff, a funny story goes a long way. Watching a sad face become a smiling one feels like a spiritual victory. “I always have a good time when you come,” a resident told me. What could be better than that?
There’s a powerful film making the rounds right now called “Sing Sing” about a prison program in the US called Rehabilitation Through the Arts. In one scene, an inmate suggests they perform a comedy because the men have enough daily drama inside the walls. With a similar vision, I wrote a new play about a chaplain who works in long-term care wrestling with the ethics of MAiD. It’s a comedy. I’m kidding. But there are jokes. Lots of jokes. I wanted to make people laugh in the face of despair.
What if having fun became our collective vision for 2025? How would it change things? I know how it changes things in my own life. It makes the journey easier to navigate.
“We need to laugh,” my boyfriend says when things are getting intense. We’re locked in a power struggle, or climate-catastrophizing, or rehearsing the future (and it looks bleak). So we do silly dances in the kitchen while the popcorn maker shoots kernels at the ceiling. We pick ridiculous movies in between the serious ones. And, best of all, we encourage each other to laugh at ourselves, the highest form of spiritual practice.
Having fun yet? Not always. But making the effort to find the laugh is one way to resist the dual temptations of fear and apathy. And who knows? In the grand scheme of things, maybe we are but merry players in the Great Cosmic Jest.
photograph by Carlos del Junco
Celia McBride s a writer and spiritual director originally from the Yukon and now living in Port Hope, Ontario. She published her memoir “O My God: An Un-Becoming Journey” in 2022. Please visit celiamcbride.com to find out more.
Read about Celia's spiritual accompaniment practice here.
