Remember Pa? In all those Laura Ingalls Wilder books Pa would work hard all day long, back-breaking work, the work of a starving pioneer. But at the end of the day he’d pull out his fiddle and sing the girls to sleep. Have you ever wondered why? Why didn’t he draw or play cards or lay on his back and stare up at the ceiling?
Many years ago I read an article by Gretchen Rubin, author of the Happiness Project. I think about it all the time, because it was one of those insightful memos that has come up again and again in my life.
In the article she describes three types of fun. My college degree happens to be in leisure (Leisure Management, why am I not teaching this somewhere as an ad junct? All my professors were ad junct, if that isn’t a red flag. Who was in charge? Were we learning anything at all? But I digress), so I consider myself an expert–and also a person who really, really wanted to finish my college degree as quickly, cheaply, and efficiently as possible. (Those parks and rec advisors are entirely accommodating.)
Rubin is somewhat of an expert in finding meaning in a meaningless life. She’s like a modern leisure counselor for the King Solomons of today who have everything they could want but are looking for fulfillment void of any spiritual themes. She is a self-help memoirist.
Rubin’s three categories fun are these:
- Challenging fun
- Accommodating fun
- Relaxing fun
The first–challenging fun–Rubin explains, is the kind of fun where you invest energy into learning a skill–participating, practicing, and sometimes perfecting it. She gives golf as an example. My own leisure pursuits have included running, drawing, writing, and playing music. Rubin says this kind of fun is the most fulfilling.
The second, accommodating fun, is when you spend leisure time with other people, but the fun doesn’t require investing a level of skill. This could be watching your kids play soccer on a Saturday morning, taking a trip to the museum, or playing a board game with friends. Some time is committed, but the fun is more about balancing the desires of others and enjoying cooperative leisure pursuits. Lately I’ve loved cheering my kids on as they participate in archery and basketball.
The third type of fun is relaxing fun. Rubin describes this as “practically effortless” and “passive by design”. Some examples are watching TV or lying by a pool. To bring the article into 2022 (it was originally written in 2007), I’d like to add: social media, scrolling on your phone, and youtube. Relaxing fun tends to add up quickly, hour by hour (as our phones discreetly tell us by noting, your average daily screen time has gone up by 35% this week).
The interesting thing is, as Rubin points out–relaxing fun, where folks spend the majority of their leisure time–is the least kind of fun. Isn’t it fascinating that a secular expert came to the conclusion that passive fun has a limit to its “fun”?
Challenging and accommodating fun strengthen skills and focus and relationships, but relaxing fun, at some point, tends to gnaw away at life.
That feeling after you’ve watched two hours of TV and eaten a plate of pizza bites? Four hours, six hours? Somewhere in there the law of diminishing returns will apply and you’ll begin to feel less rested and more like a huge slob. It doesn’t compare to the thrill you get from making your own artwork, or performing your own music, or winning a football game.
At least that’s the wisdom of Gretchen Rubin. Is she right?
Well, sort of.
Leisure is not meaningless. Leisure and joy are brothers, and joy is crucial to a fulfilling life. But real joy can only be found in a life that has a certain level of accountability to God. And when you are accountable to a higher something, you can sort of Dave Ramsey-budget your way into finding more leisure and joy instead of wasting lots of time on unfulfilling “fun”, the kind that gnaws away at life.
What Rubin has erased from her theory is the fundamental purpose in living. It is, to borrow from the Westminster Catechism, to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.
Erasing God from the equation–your fun has no purpose. There’s no fulfillment; there’s no rest. No contentment.
Listen to King Solomon, who had every pleasure at his hand:
I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly…I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives. I undertook great projects; I built houses for myself and planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I also owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces. I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well–the delights of a man’s heart… I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun. Ecc. 2:3-8,10-11
Solomon tried it all out–the challenging, the accommodating, the relaxing. The biggest satisfaction, he says, came from the more laborious pursuits, the work of his hands. Still, devoid of any greater meaning than “having fun”–Solomon was left to wallow in the meaninglessness of it.
There’s great news, then, because conversely, when we lean into that higher purpose–to glorify God–we will find enjoyment and satisfaction that is filled with meaning.
We are told, in the Word, to “be doers and not just hearers” (James 1:22). This sounds like Rubin’s first kind of fun. Do. Train for it and run the race to win an award (1 Cor. 9:24, 27).
We are told to not just seek our own good, but also the good of others (1 Cor. 10:24). This sounds like the second kind of fun. We accommodate one another, and build each other up (1 Thess. 5:11).
We are warned, again and again (by Solomon himself!) to guard ourselves against passive, lazy behavior.
“Lazy hands make for poverty” (Prov. 10:4),
“A sluggard buries his hand in the dish; he will not even bring it back to his mouth!” (Prov. 19:24)
“The craving of the sluggard will be the death of him, because his hands refuse to work. All day long he craves for more, but the righteous give without sparing” (Prov.21:25-26).
Can we glorify God in our free time and leisure pursuits? If Laura’s Pa can pull out his fiddle after a long day on the prairie, I think there is plenty of time for it.
