5 min read
I've been thinking about fun for months now.
Last winter, my husband and I had more of it than we'd had in years. We were somewhere with friends and easy laughter, we picked up a new sport together, and for the first time in a long time we were playing instead of just managing. Fun felt like a tonic. By spring I'd remembered something I think a lot of us forget in mid-life. Fun is not a luxury. It's a part of how you stay well.
Then we came home, and the last couple of months happened. Pressure, responsibilities, the kind of stretch where you put your head down and just keep going. I knew the fun had gone missing. I could feel the absence of it. I was with people I love, doing good and important things, and still that lit-up feeling I'd had over the winter was nowhere to be found. I genuinely could not figure out how to bring it back.
It took our trip to London last week, the laughing that came back fast and loud during a few days away with my husband, to remind me what I'd let slip. And I don't think I'm the only one.
If you're a woman in your 40s or 50s reading this, this one's for you.
How It Goes Missing
Nobody actively decides to stop having fun. It happens in a hundred small choices that each made sense at the time. The career gets demanding, the kids get busy, a parent needs more help, and you say yes to one more committee or dinner or project that you'd be good at, until eventually the things you used to do for no reason at all start to feel indulgent.
The weeknight out with the friend who makes you laugh turns into "next month, I promise." The hobby gets quietly shelved in favour of the kid's activity. The afternoon you'd carved out for yourself gets eaten by the laundry. None of these choices are wrong on their own, but they add up over time, and one day you realize you can't remember the last time you laughed so hard your stomach hurt.
That's not a calendar problem. That's the slow disappearance of something your body actually needs.
Why It Matters More Than We Think
The research on adult play isn't huge, but what's there is striking. Genuine fun shows up in your stress hormones, your immune markers, your sleep quality, and even your creative thinking. Laughter on its own bumps up the cells your body uses to fight off infection, and playful absorbing activities activate the same parts of your brain involved in learning and problem solving, which is why your best ideas almost never show up when you're actively trying to have them.
The way I think about it now is that your body reads fun and stress as opposite signals, one revving you up and the other settling you down. If your week is heavy on one and bone-dry on the other, eventually you'll feel it. Probably in your sleep first, then your patience, and then everything else.
This isn't fluff. It's real biology that's been overlooked because fun has never sounded serious enough to count as a wellness practice.
The Reason You're Not Doing It
I want to be straight about this part. Most of us aren't missing fun because we don't have time. We're missing it because we've quietly decided we haven't earned it yet.
The list comes first, the kids come first, everyone else comes first, and then in theory we'll let ourselves enjoy something. The trouble is the list refills by morning, so the fun keeps getting pushed until you can't remember the last time you actually penciled it in.
The shift I keep coming back to is that fun isn't the prize you collect at the end of a productive week. It's the fuel that lets you keep going through the next one.
Permission to Be a Little Ridiculous
Here's something about me you should know.
Anytime I'm out somewhere a little fancy and there's chocolate involved, dessert at a nice restaurant, a truffle at a friend's dinner party, a piece of dark chocolate at the end of a tasting menu, I will quietly press a small piece of it onto my front teeth, turn to whoever is beside me, and ask with the most serious face I can muster, "do I have anything in my teeth?"
It gets me every single time.
It is, by every adult metric, ridiculous. I am a grown woman with grown children and a career and a perfectly good vocabulary, and I should probably be past this. I am really, really hoping I never am.
You almost certainly have your own version. The bit you do with one specific friend, the line you can't say without laughing, the thing you do in your own kitchen when nobody is watching. Whatever yours is, keep it close and pull it out often. Nobody hands out medals for outgrowing the silly thing, and you'd be quietly worse off for losing it.
Three Ways to Bring It Back This Week
A few thoughts, not a checklist.
The first is that you have to actually put it on your calendar, and in ink. I know that feels silly for something that's supposed to be spontaneous, but if you're someone whose week is already full of other people's needs, fun is exactly the thing that gets bumped when something more pressing comes up. Schedule the coffee with the friend who makes you laugh until you can't breathe, or the matinee, or the drive somewhere new with the windows down. Treating it like an appointment is the only way it survives a busy week.
The second is to find something to play, ideally something you're going to be a little bad at. A sport, a game, a card night with friends, whatever it is. Bring someone with you who's also new to it, because then nobody is the expert and the stakes are gone, and that's usually where the laughing starts.
The third is to stop weighing it before you do it. Most of us spend a lot of time deciding whether the thing we want to do is worth the time, and fun almost never wins that argument because it doesn't have anything productive on its side. That's the whole point. Do the thing anyway.
We're all very, very good at being responsible by now. We've had decades of practice at it. What we're badly out of practice on is being a little loud, a little silly, a little embarrassing in the best possible way.
This week, find a moment that has nothing going for it except that it's going to make you laugh. Press the chocolate onto your teeth, or whatever your version of that is. Show up for the thing the responsible version of you would have skipped, and see what happens.
