I am still wondering about the nature of "fun."  Not only that, but this morning I was talking to a friend about the topic and she questioned the utility and appropriateness of searching for fun.

This all started when I realized that I hadn't been having much fun lately and thought it might be a good idea to do something about it.  I immediately ran into the problem that I am not really sure what I mean by having "fun."  I don't think I mean simply enjoying myself, of even being entertained. I think I mean something deeper, something that would cause me to exclaim, "Wow, that was fun!"

I have been pondering the issue without much success, so am now searching for examples in my life in the hopes that maybe I can find a unifying feature. Three examples come to mind:

1) Way back in the old days, my wife and I were invited to a dinner at a French restaurant as a "thank you" present for some work that I had done for customer.  The dinner was splendid - it was served in very small portions, along with small amounts of the appropriate drinks.  As the meal was being served, we all were fully engaged in conversation that was enjoyable and interesting.  The meal took about four hours - which I classified as "fun."   We had a great time, kept having delicious little morsels of food, and just plain had fun.

2) A second example was when a friend let me drive his fancy little "classic" race car.  The car was hand built and beautiful.  It was also powerful, fast, extremely responsive and made great noises.  The "track" was a dirt path weaving in and out of piles of tractor and truck parts - things that had jagged edges, sharp projections, and no give if I should hit something.  I started slowly, worrying that I would contact something in the piles and ruin his very expensive toy.  However, I soon started picking up speed until I was sliding around all the corners, doing four-wheel drifts into the turns, and things like that.  It got more and more fun, and I started laughing more and more as I went around and around.  Eventually I got to laughing so hard that I had to quite because I could no longer drive properly.  That was "FUN" in all the ways that I could think of.

3) A third example of having fun is related to a few really engaging conversations that I have had with people over the years.  Some times it just seems that the "energy" is right and I find myself in really engrossing, interesting and "fun" conversations with someone.  I have been unable to predict when this might occur, but during and afterward I often say to myself, "That was sure fun!"

So it appears that being totally engrossed in some activity is part of the requirement.  It also seems that being interesting is part of the puzzle.  However, so far that doesn't give me enough clues about how I should go about introducing more fun into my life, assuming that is even a worthwhile thing to do.