Can we still have fun? (or, when play is the way)

Lessons in play from clowns, dolphins, and grief work to navigate life's complexities.

I was recently at a Shabbat dinner in Berkeley when the topic of fun came up. For me and most in my orbit, this past autumn into winter felt like anything but fun. In the midst of a world experiencing horrific violence, political crises, personal losses, and major shifts, I felt as if having fun would’ve been at the “wrong place, wrong time.” Dare I say, cancellable. And yet, I could feel how much I was thirsting for something alivening; and how much my sense of okay-ness, purpose-ness, and appreciating-life-ness requires experiencing something at least akin to fun. But can we have fun in the worst of times, and if so, how?

I was thus interested in what this group of mostly queer-, leftist-, Jewish-, activist-identifying humans would have to say about their relationships to fun these days. Around a backyard bonfire, with plates of gorgeous food on our laps and guitars within reach, a few people shared about something I wasn’t expecting: their clown work. Each spoke about respective clowning practices — clowning as performance, as group processing work, and, for one person, as Jewish holiday ritual-making.

In a recent LA Times article, clown teacher and performer Jet Eveleth describes clowning as “a celebration of the physical and vulnerable side of the human experience. When the performer embraces this ‘muchness’ of life, they serve as a mirror for the audience to see and laugh at themselves from a safe distance.” I’ve also heard clowning described as a state of responsive playfulness, acting as a vehicle for expressing our imagination and illuminating the flimsiness of conditioned norms.

I realize I’ve been long drawn to clowning approaches, from Antanas Mockus deploying mimes as traffic officers (amongst other amazing urban interventions) while Mayor of Bogota, Colombia in the 90s, to the story of Patch Adams’ dedication to humor and jest as medicine. To me, these both reflect a deeply responsive playfulness that interrupt our assumptions, habituation, and self-absorbed tendencies, and help us directly experience our aliveness and inner- and inter-connectedness.

Image: Mime directs traffic in Bogota, El Tiempo, 1995. Source: El Tiempo archives, Bogota, Colombia. Courtesy of Doris Sommer.

Lately, the clowning teachers I’ve been learning from most are dolphins (and whales). Dolphins are masters of playfulness. They seek pleasure, have sex for the fun of it, and some believe they get high recreationally (though there’s lots of internet debate on this one). Research has shown that storm severity and rising ocean temperatures results in dolphins increasing their activities of social cohesion — bonding together in deeper play, pleasure, and protection to handle increasingly difficult circumstances. Dolphins have thrived by not just looking out for each other, but caring for other species too, and seemingly doing so without depleting their own abundant energy.

I was introduced to the concept of “dolphin abundance” a few months ago. And I must admit, it’s really been clicking. I’ve had multiple encounters with dolphins and whales, both in my dreams and in real life. And whether by coincidence, manifesting, or hard work, I’m coming into an abundance of values-aligned work and projects right now. What feels especially wild (and a bit unhinged to admit) is that recently, in difficult moments, I’ve been hearing the sound of dolphins laughing — and it’s helped snap me out of the depths of despair.

A key teaching in “dolphin abundance” was on a whale encounter pilgrimage to Baja California Sur with my mom. During the winter months, in a couple of relatively calm bays secluded from the Pacific’s mighty waters, gray whales make themselves at home. It’s here that whales mate, and one year later, give birth and raise their babies. It’s also here that gray whales are their friendliest and most playful with humans, often more than anywhere else on their impossibly long migratory journey.

We learned this may be because whaling has been outlawed in this part of Mexico since the 1870s — multiple whale generations have therefore experienced safety and human trust here (on the contrary, whaling has been banned in the US only since the late 1980s). Held in a geography of safety and trust, adult whales feel safe to teach their babies to play by interacting with us and our human forms. They welcome touch, and nuzzle against boats as a way to learn about their bodies, their range of motion, and their surrounding environment. It also might simply feel good to them, as it so did to me and my mom to see them so up close and even pet them.

clip from a video I took last year of a pod of dolphins that swam next to me

Often, when people hear that grief and loss is at the core of my work practice, the conversation gets serious and somber. They may share a painful story, or say things like, “Oh, that sounds like very distressing work.” Sometimes, certainly. And I know at times I’ve played (!) right into this very idea.

But ideally, I think grief guiding can yield all the more permission for playfulness. Like clowning, grieving is a total suspension of habituated norms — an invitation to stand on our head when the world feels upside-down. To take a cue from the dolphins, as the potentiality of loss increases and the conditions get more unstable, it seems of utmost importance to be in even deeper practices of kinship, care, and play with each other and with ourselves. And as the whales inform us, places and spaces of safety are key to living playfully.

This has helped me do some sifting — shaking out old ideas of fun, of limiting beliefs of where I’m not supposed to play — and am moving into what “fun” looks like now, in this present age and stage of my life and professional practice. My emerging, refreshed sense is an adaptive, responsive kind of play that’s about feeling alive and aligned even through challenges, less than ideal scenarios, and difficult times.

The dolphins and whales, clowns, and communities I look up to all seem to find ways to playfully interact with each other to address fear and learn how to thrive, rather than run away from pain or become completely numb to it. Play in these ways strikes me as critical for getting intimate with our own life force, especially in the face of loss and despair. I’m sure as more shit hits the fan, I might get scared to play again. But hopefully I’ll be able to source some deep knowing from the dolphins and whales that when I open myself up to the creative, playful, and connective, I can more easily suspend my limiting beliefs about what may be possible ahead.

*Cue the dolphin laughter*