Bay Bridge: having fun

One time I was offered a spot at a lunch with Tom Chi, highly successful and cool something something of Google X. I had just been to a workshop he ran, and had been quite impressed, which was not an experience I was used to. So, he seemed important.

The lunch was in San Francisco, and I was in Berkeley. I had trouble calling an Uber, so my boyfriend called me a Lyft, something I hadn’t tried before. I vaguely understood that this involved an obligation to converse with the driver.

The driver was a young woman, probably a few years older than me, and maybe two decades more at peace with the world. She asked me what I was doing in San Francisco. I told her I was going to lunch. She said ‘how enjoyable’ or something, and I said that it was more of an important lunch than an enjoyable one. She asked me if I had considered having fun. I said I hadn’t, and did some maneuver with mental muscles I didn’t know I had, into having fun.

I enjoyed waiting in the park outside. Then I gathered with various lunchers looking for the place, and I talked warmly with them. The lunch was at a kind of hip and expensive institution whose practical functions were ambiguous to me. It had pillars and black walls and designer chairs. I liked the chairs, so I took a photo of the name on the bottom of one so I could investigate owning one myself. There were about twelve of us, and a long table. Instead of sitting awkwardly half way down between some people I didn’t know, I sat right next to Tom. I asked him about his notebook, and we chatted about his various views on the human mind he had, that I hadn’t thought about before, and it was great.

I still don’t really know what this mental move is, or what exactly the different set of behavior is that goes with it. It’s main feature is not greater enjoyment. And it does’t seem to coincide that much with the activities that people describe as ‘fun’ such as going on swings or dancing, so I’m not quite sure why I think it is. But sometimes still, I decide to ‘have fun’, and then I do it, and it is distinctive and good.