At any time over the summer did you find yourself sighing and thinking something like, If only I did this sort of thing more often? I know I did. Fortunately I had a friend with me. I knew they were a friend because they said, “What are you doing next weekend? Let’s do it again, this time we’ll take a taller milking stool with us.” Or something like that.
We need good friends because, strangely, even though our recreation is so good for us and the people we live with, we seem to be chronically bad at incorporating into our lives those things that aid our recreation. Why is it that we mostly seem to stumble across recreation by accident?
Friends are people who help us follow through on our moments of revelation – they help us along the below process:
1. We become aware that we are enjoying recreation: We say such as, “It doesn’t get much better than this.”
2. We recognise its beneficial effects: We say something along the lines of, “Any more of this and I might just end up being a fun person to be with.”
3. We notice and grieve the lack of such recreation in our everyweek life: “I do so little of this sort of thing. The last time I had this much fun I was put on detention.”
4. We desire more of it: We sigh, “I wish I did this more often.”
5. We resolve to experience more of it: “Memo to self, this year I’m going to …”
6. We commit to experience more of it: “See you on Saturday morning, 08:30, I’ll bring my new shovel.”
Good friends compel us to take responsibility for our neglect and convict us of our buck passing. When we’re whining on about how we’d love to get out more but we can’t because we have to do this for work and this for our family and this on the house and this for the neighbourhood excitement prevention team… and they ask outrageous questions like, “ ‘Have to’? Who says you have to?”
Friends listen and get us having a word with ourselves.
Good friends make us get our diaries out. They ask us that most powerful of questions that turns a resolution into a commitment, “So, when…?”
Good friends call for us so we go out and have fun even if it is raining or we’ve brought work home with us or the cat needs hoovering… They help us defeat the procrastinationosaurus.
Good friends ask us awareness raising questions like, what else could you do to have more fun? – Having fun is usually recreational.
Good friends will put up with being labelled a bad influence by fearful friends and family of the friend we are encouraging into recreation; in the early days at least. Usually friends and family come round when they notice how much they benefit from the fruit of their loved one being encouraged to enjoy recreation.
Good friends understand our need for recreation. They’re in the same boat – they know that without recreation comes decay.
Be a good friend.
Get a good friend – at least one, better, get a pile of them.
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