Just for the fun of it

Anything can be a spiritual practice. (Image by Daniel Kirsch)

I watched a bunch of episodes of Fraggle Rock as a kid, but there's only one that I remember with any clarity.

Among the Fraggles, there lived creatures called Doozers. They were continually building and rebuilding structures in and among the rock formations of their habitat. The Fraggles ate these structures, which is why the Doozers were constantly rebuilding.

Well, in one episode, the Fraggles feel guilty and decide to stop eating the Doozers' structures. As a result, the Doozers don't have to build anything, and they get depressed. When the Fraggles start eating the structures again, the ecosystem is restored and the Doozers get happy again.

I remember this episode because this theme comes up all the time. We humans aren't so different from the Doozers: If we have no sense of purpose, we get bored, and existential dread sets in.

There is something to be said for reckoning with this malaise and working through it. We can't just paper over our pain with constant smartphone use. I believe that we ought to be emotionally healthy enough to stare off into space, go for walks in solitude, and have experiences that we don't share on social media.

That said, I think it's also acceptable to have things that we do just to stay busy, solely to stave off existential crises. If you look really closely at these activities, they don't seem to be necessary or logical. That doesn't mean we don't need them.

For example, I know many entrepreneurs who have already made enough money for a lifetime. On the one hand, they could quit building their company since they no longer need to work. On the other hand, that's like telling a musician that they've played enough music. Building a company is what this person does. The money, at a certain point, becomes irrelevant. The entrepreneur is building the company just for the fun of it.

The metric that matters, then, is joy. We can do the things that bring us joy, whether or not they are necessary. Who is to say what is necessary? Maybe that which is necessary is that which brings us joy.

Delving too deeply into the purpose behind an activity is a little like seeing how much butter is used to make a restaurant dish taste good. We might not like what is exposed. Sometimes, the richness of life is a gift we can simply enjoy without parsing it.

Other times, when we are wishing for joy but find ourselves only in the realm of pleasure, it can be useful to question our choices. Are there negative feelings that we're trying to avoid? Are we participating in a routine that we no longer wish to be part of? Slowing down and getting off of the merry-go-round can be uncomfortable but useful.

And then we might choose to get right back on again. In The Queen's Gambit, American chess star Beth talks to a thirteen-year-old Russian prodigy who dreams of being world champion by sixteen. She asks him what, if he wins, he'll do with the rest of his life. He can't understand the question.

And maybe that's okay. If chess brings enough joy and challenge to fill up a person's entire life for awhile, so be it. As long as it works, it works. It's good to be ready for when it doesn't, but we don't have to force the issue.

We can run a business just to keep busy. We can make art, destroy it, and make another piece just like the one we destroyed. If there's no point to anything, that's fine; we can keep doing what we do anyway.

In my view, what matters is how we grow and what we contribute. We don't need to be a monk in a cave, but that's one of our many options. We can do something for the fun of it, and then we can do something else. Sometimes we'll struggle, and sometimes we won't. The deep engagement we experience in doing something we love is an end in itself.