Are we having fun?

I was at a dinner last night where someone mentioned, quite seriously, that they had an interview coming up. Next thing, the interview had been contorted into something really quite ridiculous and the whole table was giggling. It went on for quite a while. I could hardly breathe. What's stayed with me is how easy it was. Nobody needed a reason. Someone threw something in, someone else added to it, and it kept evolving. We’re all good at this. We spend half the day somewhere imaginary, replaying a conversation, planning a trip we may or may not do, picturing how something could work if someone just went through with it. The doing is harder. An idea that sounds great at 11pm round a table looks different on a dreary Thursday morning, with the pressures of normal life reining things in. It needs time, maybe love, maybe some money, and a willingness to do it, even if it's half-baked. I don't think that's laziness or caution. Day to day life doesn't leave much room for it. Work is mostly about keeping things running, free time gets eaten by admin, and making something from scratch on your own can be quite a lonely endeavour if people don't care about it. So it has to be fun. A long time ago, one of our ancestors was sat knocking a couple of rocks together for no good reason when one of them threw off a spark. Someone nearby probably went, ooh, hot bright scary thing. I reckon it was fun first and useful later. I’m writing this on Bonfire Night, so forgive the caveman musings. We've got rules, laws, best practice and etiquette for nearly everything now, and most of it is there for good reason. But it doesn't leave much room to muck about with something just to see what happens. So, are we having fun? Or just talking about it?

Written by a randomly drawn subscriber, read by a human, then sent to the whole list. Its writer chose to share it here.