The 4 Types of Fun
Everyone loves having a good time (I hope), but have you ever wondered why some people do some of the seemingly most outrageous things ever for “fun”? Like why would someone ever want to run 5000km in the longest ultramarathon in the world? Or why would someone ever want to rock climb up a 3,000ft granite wall without the safety of a harness and rope? Well, I believe that “having fun” comes in all shapes and sizes. Regardless of how you categorize them, I think that there are 4 distinct and unique types of fun, and the funny part is that you’ve definitely taken a ride down all four them. Hear me out:
Type 1 Fun - The Classic Fantastic
Type 1 fun is your standard dose of good times. Often paired with high fives, chest bumps and a whole lot of “dude that was sick.” It’s fun that you thought would be fun, is fun when it’s happening, and is fun when you think about it afterwards. Skiing powder, playing laser tag, thanksgiving dinner, unwrapping gifts, playing with the cute puppy in the park, water slides, when you put the USB stick in the correct way on your first try - all great example of type 1 fun. There’s not much more to say here, everybody loves type 1 fun. It’s generally safe, reliable, consistent and most importantly, fun.
A big ol’ face shot of type 1 fun.
Type 2 Fun - The “I’m Never Doing This Again.”
Type 2 fun is where the cookie can sometimes crumble. People make careers out of having type 2 fun. People die having type 2 fun (which I guess wouldn’t be type 2, but we’ll get to that later). Do you ever find yourself doing something, and while it’s happening, you tell yourself that you’re never doing this again, but then the next day it’s all you want to be doing? Basically, type 2 fun is a terrible time while it’s happening, but is fun in retrospect. Hiking uphill, running a marathon, jumping into cold water, working out, cleaning your room, writing exams, when Phoebe from Friends was pregnant with triplets. Type 2 fun is personally my favorite type of fun and is also without a doubt the most rewarding. It challenges us, validates our choices, surrounds our most prized memories, and most importantly it pushes us to progress in our respective fields.
Just a bit windy…
Sunset views are always worth the grind up.
Type 3 Fun - Well That Sucked.
Ah crap. Type 3 fun. It can creep up on you from anywhere. It’s like the spider that runs out from under the couch and scares you to death. If you partake in any type of fun, you’re inevitably running the risk of having type 3 fun. It’s when you set out on something you thought would potentially be fun, but turns into a miserable time and when you look back at it, it was just a big fat failure. Maybe you suffered an injury on a hike, maybe your car broke down on the way to an event, or maybe you burnt your tongue on the first sip of your morning coffee. One of the positives you can take from a type 3 fun experience is the ticket to telling a seemingly interesting story to your friends depending on what happened.
High altitude trekking in the Himalayas
One of my recent examples of type 3 fun was on a routine backpacking mission. It was about a 30km roundtrip, only this particular time, every kilometer of it was thoroughly ravaged with starving mosquitoes. Okay, so think about walking down the street in the pouring rain, now instead of each raindrop hitting you, it’s a mosquito landing on you. We kept on moving forward in hopes that elevation would slowly thin out the mozzies. That wasn’t the case at all. I remember actually thinking at one point that there must have been some sort of scientific atmospheric phenomenon happening in the area. Needless to say, the 3 of us resulted in hiding inside the one hammock that had a bug net attached to it. There we were, lying on the ground wrapped up and tangled in this net on top of a mountain getting absolutely demolished by blood suckers, like captured hostages tied up on a pirate ship.
Hiding from mosquitoes + wildfire smog
