In last week’s column a very bright dog named James and his master were on a journey to find fun in Williston Park.
This man has been on a tireless quest to find fun for some time and has traveled far and wide on this journey. He has sought the magic of the Blue Grotto in Capri. He has attempted deep spiritual meditation at Quaker Meeting Houses. He even tried floatation therapy where he withstood sensory deprivation for an hour.
All that occurred in the isolation chamber was a vivid recall of the Frank Sinatra song “Fly me to the moon.”
He was even about to try cryotherapy, which entails submerging your body in deep cold for two minutes but his primary care physician advised against it.
The man has reread the classic essay “On Little Joys” by Hermann Hesse which instructs the reader that life ought be seen ‘as a happy thing, as a festival.’
All these minor and major adventures have been had by the man and yet the simple idea of fun seems allusive and just out of reach of our hapless hero.
In last week’s column it seems that James and the man were indeed on to the answer when little Henry Hildebrandt suggested they read chapter 7 in “Wind in the Willows,” which was entitled “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.”
I am sorry to report that the man has not read the chapter yet so in an effort to deepen his insight into the experience of fun I thought I would do some solid reporting in his behalf.
My plan was simple. I would go down the street with pen and pad and ask local residents how they had fun and was it effective in bringing them happiness.
The first man I asked was David Kim the owner of Pembroke Cleaners in Williston Park. He was quick to tell me that his idea of fun was attendance at Sunday services at his church.
Needless to say this idea didn’t excite me.
My memory of Sunday church going was as follows. We had to fast each Sunday and put on nice clothes. Then my four siblings and I were packed into the family station wagon and off we went.
At church there was endless praying in Latin and endless kneeling and standing at the prompting of little bells that the alter boys would jingle.
The only joyful part of Sunday Service was getting donuts at breakfast when we got home. How good they tasted.
To further my data my second stop was to Pyramid Jewelers where I spoke to Allan Walsh and his lovely wife.
I posed the question of fun and they remarked, “We golf together and take long walks on the North Fork.”
Now I seemed to be getting some traction. After all, I think walking may be the best and easiest way to have fun.
I think the combination of fresh air, exposure to the sun and sky and mild exercise is one of the secrets to joy if not fun. Thoreau, Virginia Wolfe and Hermann Hesse all have written wisely about this simple pleasure.
I next stopped into Hildebrandt’s and asked Tom who told me he plays piano to have fun.
The pretty waitress/owner young Miss Acosta told me that she enjoys being with her friends who may go bowling or maybe to a concert. And my friend Eli who serves me those delicious cheeseburgers said something I could relate to. He first said “mostly I work.”
I remarked “don’t we all but what do you do for fun?”
He thought and said “I have fun with my daughter as well. We go swimming in the pool together.”
All these sensible and pleasurable activities ought to be enough to keep anyone contented.
But I think we are not contented. Not really.
Somehow there remains the wish, the hope, the dream that fun and happiness can go on forever and ever. But it does not.
In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World: the people would complain that Soma always wore off and they had to return to reality.
And for us the fun does indeed end as does the weekend. And we must face another week for work.
I think the real key to the question of fun and where to find it is contained in my memory of going to church on Sunday morning.
In those days we had to fast and dress well and sit silently and kneel on hard benches and suffer through incomprehensible liturgies spoken in Latin.
But after the suffering came the fun. I still remember the smell and the taste of those jelly donuts and how the sugar would stick to my fingers.
There is a yin and yang in the universe.
Following darkness there is light. Following suffering there is joy.
Following hunger there is the wonderful taste of food.
I think you cannot have one without the other. And let us hope that this finding will satisfy James and the man.
It may sound grim to suggest that asceticism is the real pathway to joy but it may be true. You can’t have one without the other.
