Make time for fun
When did we stop playing?
Kids tend to focus on one thing and one thing only: fun! I wonder then why so many of us adults make daily to-do lists that have nothing to do with enjoying the day? Would our child selves be proud of the people we have become? I woke up this morning and, yes, made the mental goal list. While working on said list, which involved cleaning up after the circus animals who live in my home, I stepped on something small and sharp on the living room floor. It looked like a wadded-up candy wrapper. But upon closer examination, I smiled to find the world’s smallest paper airplane.
The night before, while I sat on the couch doing paperwork, my 11-year-old son had pelted me with various paper airplanes from across the room. “Mom, catch!” I’d look up and defend myself just in time to avoid losing an eye and then return to my computer. Finally, when I took the dog out, Matt followed me with one of the airplanes, and we threw it back and forth in the yard for a while, bending the wings every which way to see what squirrelly flight path we could make for the other person to attempt to catch. I found myself laughing, and losing track of time, and forgetting all about the work that was still waiting for me inside. And maybe that’s OK, necessary even, from time to time.
In an article published for Psychology Today, resiliency and wellness scholar Robyne Hanley-Dafoe writes about the value of play for adults. “Research shows that play relieves stress, fuels creativity, imagination, and problem-solving abilities, and facilitates happiness and well-being. Play is also a gateway to empathy, communication, and relationships.” Now that sounds like something essential, akin to vitamins and exercise. Certainly not a luxury to be reserved for children, or vacations, or those somedays that never come. “What exactly is play?” you might ask, in your mature adult way of trying to define and control this thing. Kids don’t need to ask this question, by the way. They know the answer in their happy little hearts. But for those of us who have forgotten the feel of it, let me define this in clinical terms. Brené Brown, in her podcast, Unlocking Us, says that play is “time spent without purpose…activities where you lose track of time…where you feel free to be yourself…uninhibited.” The things that would meet that definition for me would be hiking, anything involving words (either reading or writing them), and, of course, flying.
Luckily, aviation affords us many opportunities for play. Do you ever go flying just to fly? Not to get from A to B, get proficient, or make a buck, but just to enjoy it? One of my fellow writing aviators, Beth Stanton, editor of the National Association of Flight Instructors’ Mentor magazine, says that she does aerobatic flying for the “challenge, excitement, glory, and camaraderie.” She only half-heartedly denies being an adrenaline junkie. I’m no expert, but that certainly seems to fit our definition of fun. Or what about airport pancake breakfasts, campouts, or fly-ins? When my brother and I flew into Oshkosh for EAA’s AirVenture, I had serious plans about gathering material for an article and getting up to speed on recent aviation developments. But the parts I remember most are sitting around the camping stove with newly met pilot friends (courtesy of my brother, who can strike up a conversation with just about anybody), or laughing about how best to secure our janky tent to the Cessna 172’s wing struts to keep the ceiling from collapsing, or the endless wandering from display to display with no other purpose than to just find something cool and interesting.
In short, what started out as work devolved into plain old fun, and I don’t regret a moment of it. A flight instructor friend recently told me about an afternoon she spent with her young son. They had dressed as characters from Harry Potter and participated in a Halloween fly-in at a nearby airport. Looking at their smiling faces and witch hats and wands, I wasn’t sure who enjoyed it more, my friend or her boy.
Maybe it’s time we put a new item on our to-do lists: make time for fun. Go outside and play, linger in the sun, take an airplane ride just for the thrill of it. I promise it won’t be a waste of time. 
