The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again

by Catherine Price

But it’s also gotten out of control. I’ve become convinced that our phones and other wireless mobile devices (which are sometimes referred to as “WMDs”—weapons of mass distraction) are pulling our internal compasses seriously offtrack, insinuating themselves into our lives in ways that aren’t just scattering our attention;

The first thing we need to acknowledge is that our lives are what we pay attention to. Indeed, our attention is the most valuable resource that we have. Think about it. We only experience what we pay attention to. We only remember what we pay attention to. Your choice of what to pay attention to in any given minute might not seem like a big deal, but taken together, these decisions are deeply consequential. As Annie Dillard has written, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

The words we use to talk about attention and time—we pay attention; we spend time—are the same verbs we use to discuss money, which implies that we understand their value, at least subconsciously. (It also suggests that we should be wary of anything we do to “kill” or “waste” or even “pass” time.)

My research on fun has taught me that this approach is misguided. Instead, I now try to keep in mind a paraphrased version of an observation from Henry Thoreau: “The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”