Have We Forgotten How To Have Fun?

Since the inception of the monetization of everything, friendships have taken a downward turn and so has happiness.

At a restaurant in London, I looked across the table to my friend spluttering noises from his mouth into discernible pieces of language. Murmuring the same thing, again and again, he chewed and spewed food until it became obvious that our friendship is anything but. We often spoke of interesting and pleasurable topics, from the density of food size appearing on our plates, it’s colour, it’s texture and taste to the happenings of football results, comedic rants, politics and the evils that roam within it. These days, not so much. It’s as if the word ‘fun’ had changed into something else – something more sinister, secretly secreting within our brains to chase an obscenity we felt will bring happiness and disgustingly – power.

It wasn’t until I looked up, that I could see his demeanour had changed, the way he spoke shifted and his motivations were different. He was no longer my friend, but a potential colleague.

As difficult as it is to admit, the essence of friendship can slip away into chasing the dream. Dreams that turn into devoir and ‘I’m busy texts’. The need to be someone often recedes the desire to be who we are, masticating through our lives like a cow in recently deforested ground, hoping to be a cash one, milking ourselves into something unnecessary for life.

Attempting to recall the last time we partook in activities of enjoyment, I struggled to muster a sense of what it felt like. In being motivated for comfort in industry, we sacrificed a friendship to achieve something that left no mark of example except the unnecessity of monetary insatiability.

Where do we all go from here, if our object is to turn the object of our affections into cash flow and portfolios? We needn’t do such a thing, if such a thing ruins our passions, our lives, our love, our self esteem, what we are and how we have fun.