I sent a book recommendation to my friend on Friday. The book is called, ‘A Playful Path’ – and it talks about the joy of games, mini-games, seeing life as a game, having a mindset of lightness, play, ‘playful intelligence’, and more. Here’s the table of contents:

You get the gist…

I’m yet to fully read the book, but I found it funny that whilst my Friday began with that suggestion (and rabbithole on ‘playful exercises’), my Sunday morning was vastly different.

I woke up, went to a coffee shop to do some work, came home, and felt immense sloth. I started questioning life, and then I decided to take a look at a book I’d been meaning to read. It’s called, ‘The Road Less Travelled’, by Scott Peck. It’s great, and starts with the fundamental truths of suffering, encountering suffering, and delayed gratification.

Some great excerpts from that were:

Most do not fully see (acknowledge/accept) that life is difficult. Instead, they moan more or less incessantly, noisly, or subtly, about the enormity of their problems, their burdens, and their difficulties, as if life was generally easy, and as if life should be easy.

Life is a series of problems. Do we want to moan about them or solve them? Do we want to teach our children to solve them?

Discipline is the the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems. Without discipline we solve nothing.

It is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning. Problems call forth our courage and wisdom. Indeed, they create our courage and our wisdom. i

Fearing the pain involved, almost all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, attempt to avoid problems. We ignore them, pretend they do not exist…Neurosis becomes a substitute for legitimate suffering.

There are four tools, techniques of suffering — Delaying gratification, acceptance of responsibility, dedication to truth, and balance.

Finally, my favorite, which ties fun and suffering together: Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.

Damn!! These are some series universal truths that I’d forgotten more recently. With the ‘fun’ frame in mind, you realise that fun and effective suffering are not mutually exclusive; and you’d probably get better bang for your buck pursuing both, head-on, consciously; intentionally.

I have a few intuitions on where this can apply and be actionable in my life right now, so I’m going to journal about this privately. I hope to report back on my findings another time.

I wish you fun, and suffering until then.

Krish

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