Bucking the traditional trajectory that one usually takes by gaining maturity as one ages, my life has unwound in typically-atypical fashion as I find myself getting less and less serious as the years advance. When I was a child, I was super serious about everything. There were moments of laughter and glee, but far more often I was determined and humorless, doggedly trudging through everything that was expected of the oldest son in a strict Catholic Filipino family. All of the responsibility, none of the glory. It served me well, something I’ve realized as I’ve grown into adulthood, when being responsible and consistent are necessary traits to any sort of success or ease in living. I used to look back with tinges of regret that I hadn’t let loose and had more fun when I was a kid, but lately I’ve had a change of heart and perspective, particularly as having fun now carries a sense of reward and release that those with carefree, giddy and non-stop-fun-filled childhoods can only attempt to recapture.
Being silly and goofing off after you’ve earned it is a joy in itself. If you started off goofing off in class and being silly at every turn of youth, and you have the typical results that come from it, you may find yourself having to work a little more and enjoy things a little less. I’ve been fortunate, and had the foresight, to have done the heavy mental lifting as a kid – now it’s all downhill, with less trudging and more giggling. The older I get, the less I know, and the more fun and frivolous the world feels.
“Don’t let us take doubts with exaggerated seriousness nor let them grow out of proportion, or become black-and-white or fanatical about them. What we need to learn is how slowly to change our culturally conditioned and passionate involvement with doubt into a free, humorous, and compassionate one. This means giving doubts time, and giving ourselves time to find answers to our questions that are not merely intellectual or “philosophical,” but living and real and genuine and workable. Doubts cannot resolve themselves immediately; but if we are patient a space can be created within us, in which doubts can be carefully and objectively examined, unraveled, dissolved, and healed. What we lack, especially in this culture, is the right undistracted and richly spacious environment of the mind, which can only be created through sustained meditation practice, and in which insights can be given the change slowly to mature and ripen.” ~ Sogyal Rinpoche, ‘The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying’
