On Making It Fun
“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs.”
—Christopher Morley, American writer and editor, 1890-1957
As a teacher and coach, I’m often confused by students or athletes (and even parents) who insist that a class or a practice be “fun.” What’s more, I am at a loss for words when students say they learn in my class because I “make it fun.”
“Thank you?” I say. “Thank you, I think?”
It’s as if the word “fun” has become an ingredient to make the bland more savory. Like cheese on broccoli or peanut butter on celery, it makes what is inherently good for you seem, well, good.
Example: a few years ago, I organized a meeting for parents and athletes to learn about a summer conditioning program. I provided information about practices and training volume that would progress through the summer and provide an aerobic base for the fall—all of which would lead to a successful competition season. I was really proud of myself.
When I finished, a mother raised her hand and said, “Are you going to make it fun?”
I was befuddled, dumbfounded, possibly cross-eyed.
“Fun?” I said.
“Yeah, kids won’t do it unless it’s fun.”
At that point, I knew I was living in the Twenty-first century, surrounded by parents who have instilled in their children a deep and undying pleasure ethic rather than a work ethic.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-fun. In fact, I’m a fun professional. No matter what I do, I have fun. I write this blog and have fun. I could figure my taxes and have fun. I say this because fun is not an additive, it’s a perspective. It’s a lens through which we see the world and everything around us.
Fun is the means to perceive with empathy during an act of misery.
“Fun is not an additive, it’s a perspective. It’s a lens through which we see the world and everything around us.”
When we say we have to “make it fun” for kids, we do not empower them with the skill of intellectual curiosity. We teach them that they are powerless to involvement. As a result, we have taught kids how to be entertained rather than how to entertain themselves.
This is why I like coaching—particularly in sport like distance running. Long distance running is, by definition, toilsome, trying, a test of our capacity (physical and mental). It is hard work—therefore undesirable.
The challenge as coach is to teach kids how to view distance running through the goggles of fun. A sense of humor is necessary. A joie de vivre imperative. The fun I have is serviceable to myself—it allows me concentrate on what is important and what is not and treat the two as equals.
I teach kids through analogy. “Let’s say you don’t like reading,” I say. “Let’s say you think reading is boring. Here’s the problem with that. A book is simply words on a page. They are fixed and cannot change. If you say you are bored, the book cannot change and make itself entertaining. The words cannot jump off the page and do a pole dance on your face.”
Kids laugh when I say this.
“It is not the book that is boring,” I say, “it is we who choose to be bored.”
Kids don’t laugh when I say this.
“The words on the page are fixed and unmalleable, but the mind, the perspective, the degree of intellectual curiosity we bring to our engagement with the page is the one thing that is malleable. We can exercise it, or not. We can choose to have fun, or not. But it is not the book’s fault, it is not running’s fault, it is not our taxes’ fault, it is not mathematics’ fault for being boring when we do not bring joy. You put in your backpack everything you need to get through school—your books, your binder, your lunch, your running gear. Do not forget your joy. It’s with you every day, just like your calculator—and you would never think of going through math without making use of your calculator. Same thing with your joy, your fun. Use it to make you work harder.”
Perhaps I am stuck in the Twentieth century with my Protestant work ethic and dour disposition, but I tell my athletes to never confuse my being serious with not having fun. Some hear it, some do not. Some believe me, some do not.
But those who believe me are the ones who have fun.
And the ones who have fun like to run.
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