The Stoic Key to Fun and Authenticity
Life isn't that serious, but it is. It’s not a matter of life or death ... though it can be sometimes.
"Nature has endowed us with two characters or personae. The first is common to all of us as participants in reason and superior to beasts. It provides the entire basis for decency and decorum, and is the source of our interest in identifying duties. The other is assigned to us as individuals with distinctive traits." — Cicero
"There's no point in fighting against nature or in seeking to become what you can't." — Cicero
"Don't be a judger, bro." — Ken Carson
Life isn't that serious, but it is. It’s not a matter of life or death … though it can be sometimes. It’s a balancing act. To be too dull, too outcome-oriented and stony-faced is to miss out on the beautiful but often dismissed less practical aspects of our existence.
It’s to miss out on the point that lightheartedness and good results aren’t mutually exclusive.
Sure, we have to make a living and help people, but the moments we spend goofing around with those who matter to us is quite as important. We get to have fun, bond and enjoy exploring divergent personalities. We get to live. Be human.
Life is richly mysterious with many pleasures to surprise and interest us. It’s not the straight line we force it to be. It doesn't have to be as Marcus would say,
"all about business."
Otherwise, why do we work so hard if not to freely express our freedom, hang out with people we want, make who we want happy, and do what we wanna do without the exclusion of love and compassion?
The whole essence of being serious, one would say, is to facilitate our carefree moments. But there’s no reason that even your critical tasks shouldn’t be approached with some cheer, especially if you’ve put in the reps to master your craft.
Even in war and poverty, you can find joy in that beautiful element of courage, endurance and rebellion to do what’s right. It doesn't have to be gloomy, even if we carry painful truths about the unseemly state of our life, the losses we have to deal with, the dreadful work we have to do — our mortality.
It's thus,
"more fitting for a man,"
as Seneca says,
"to laugh at life than to lament over it".
Or as Epictetus goads his students,
"I must die. But must I die bawling? I must be put in chains — but moaning and groaning too? I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?"
We can’t, as Allan Watts said,
“take seriously what the gods made for fun.”
We have to live. Be perfectly imperfect. Not because we've given up on perfection, but because we're working with our nature as we have it.
Struck with a lust for life, we’re living with our cynicism while matching confidently on our grandest ambitions. We’re sad at the tragedies of life and the longings of could have been while loving this moment as it is — as the universe itself. We live, as Yëat says, “in between the lines.”
In this chasm of duality, we get to enjoy the beauty of life in its change, in its becoming.
For, as Goethe says,
“After all, what good is all this profligate abundance of suns, planets, moons, stars, Milky Ways, comets, nebula, worlds in the process of becoming and which have come to be, if, when all is said and done, one happy man does not rejoice, unconsciously, in his own existence?”
The fun life is nothing but passive as we still stick to our strict code of values because it provides us with stability, happiness and a flourishing life — helping us have more fun. The major difference being that we allow ourselves to express the fun and weird parts of our character which we've learnt to hide because of the fear that they would make us different and attract ridicule.
A strong foundation of order supplemented by harmless indulgences, some menacing cleverness, occasional farts, and a tinge of humor is the ideal of an artful life — a consummation of order and chaos integrated in man. For rigidness is a vice and life is too short to be boring. To be bored is a grave sin.
So,
“at the least everyone should stick to his own habits, as long as they aren't morally wrong. That way the goal of decorum is easier to meet," Cicero says.
This mindset is good because it gives us the freedom to express our uniqueness as what’s potentially threatening: fear, sloth, pride, cruelty, is taken care of. When you know what's wrong is what hurts others and what's right is what helps them. When you understand virtue is the highest good, the present divine — it’s joy enough, and externals extraneous, then you can express the weird aspects of your personality more easily and without fear because of the power it brings you. It makes you more than a robot. More than just another human being for you're the genuine utterance of the human soul. Authentic.
It's good to be serious sometimes on matters as weighty as our happiness and work involving other people, but in the times we're by ourselves, at work, with family, a lover or with our friends, it's wise to be in the moment, crack some jokes, be silly, fuck around, share a whiskey, enjoy lively conversation and create fun memories.
Without a doubt it's easy to be lewd, vulgar and take fun too far.