Barbra Streisand is looking for fun. “I haven’t had much fun in my life, to tell you the truth,” she told the BBC. “And I want to have more fun.”
I find this unnerving. She is Barbra Streisand – surely she could just click her fingers and have fun brought to her, like a Roman emperor? She cloned her dog, twice! She created her own historical shopping mall (which anyone who knows York Castle Museum’s Victorian street recreation will find uncannily familiar, although hers has more haunted dolls)! Plus, if the video I just watched is accurate, she even has a “room dedicated to napping”, which – forget being an Egot – is the pinnacle of achievement. If she isn’t having fun, what hope is there for anyone else?
Despite not being prodigiously talented, driven and rich beyond the dreams of avarice, I get it. I have thought for a while that I never have fun, which is not the same as saying I am unhappy – far from it. I enjoy plenty of things: my hens, aperitifs, lusting over vintage Welsh blankets and watching videos of a goat called Gary and his exasperated minder. But fun seems as inaccessible as Streisand’s beachfront Malibu mansion. You want me to stop overthinking and gambol like a lamb? With these hip flexors, in 2023?
I asked friends what they did for fun and the only response I got for ages was: “No idea.” Gradually, a few tentative suggestions followed: puppies, walking on (low) walls, crazy golf and roller-skating lessons. More of us, though, feel we are missing out. One says she resolves every year to have more fun, but “I end up scrubbing the grout in my bathroom”. “I’m not sure I’ve ever had any,” mused another, blaming Catholicism.
Is this – the absolute least of our collective problems – not even a problem? Yes, obviously. No one is looking at the world right now and thinking: “A massive trampoline session would sort all this out,” or: “Never mind the climate crisis, how can I amuse my inner child?” But I don’t think adding to the sum of human unhappiness by denying yourself fun is desirable, or necessary, or productive. And if Streisand is turning her fabled determination to the question, at 81, perhaps we should be considering it, too.
A therapist suggested it’s “a mindset, not an activity”; if you have lost the knack, or never built the muscle, it’s worth trying to identify when, and with whom, you have the most fun. The one time I distinctly remember having fun was making and wearing an octopus costume in 2017, which might be hard to replicate.
Thankfully, I have people in my life for whom it comes easier. My best friend never loses sight of fun, even when life is very hard. We met when she challenged me on Twitter to conduct a meeting with two inflatable dinosaurs in my very serious employer’s office. My husband, meanwhile, has never met a tea cosy he won’t put on his head or a body of water he won’t fill with toys.
From them, I have seen that fun requires you to embrace, or at least accept, silliness. It has to be useless, too. That is not a value judgment; I mean there is no fun in functional. I suspect there is also often an element of physicality (wow, I am making this sound un-fun). Mainly, you need a willingness to shed self-consciousness, fear, guilt and embarrassment. Easy.
This just confirms what we already knew: that fun is child’s play. It’s mainly a young person’s game, like shaving off your eyebrows or Y2K crop tops. Maybe that is only fair. Older people got homes and a world that wasn’t a smoking ruin; perhaps it’s greedy to want fun as well.
But I do want fun – and I think the ability to access it at any age is good for the soul and the world. Now, I have hope, because if anyone can work out how it’s done, and show the rest of us, it’s Streisand. The woman has a nap room! Actually, when you are over 18, that might well be part of the answer.
• Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist
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