‘We are lives that want to be lived’ says Catherine Price in her book The Power of Fun, how to feel alive again.

I recently made a realisation that I had somehow drifted away from my old-self and that I wanted to reconnect with her. My understanding is that this sort of loss came as a result of a number of life, societal and upbringing factors that make us prioritise certain things over others. Like prioritising work over your own health or well-being.

This can be particularly true when your career choices have been driven by what you consider meaningful. Back when we choose what we want to do for a living, I decided: I want to work in an organisation that helps me contribute to making the world a more sustainable place (translation: yep, I am totally going to save the planet). Equipped with this totally realistic goal in mind, I felt driven towards high-energy roles that attract passionate people like magnets (translation: jobs that most likely do rely on people who are not well equipped with the ability to set boundaries to prioritise other aspects of their lives than work).

And one day you wake up realising that your inner drive has driven you to the ground.

In 2020, I felt quite exhausted and empty and realised that I did not want to be in the waiting room of my own life and that I wanted to start feeling alive again. So I made an important life decision to try and spend less of this life working. I made the decision to reconnect with little Yasmina who used to spontaneously sing and dance whenever possible because it made her feel good.

Sadly I think I had somehow stopped prioritising or allowing these creative outlets because they were objectively not useful (translation: your singing or dancing is not going to save the planet so why bother). So, when I simply realised that I had been censuring myself for many years and that I wanted this to change, I signed up for singing and dancing classes, with the conscious intention for it not to carry the burden of usefulness. (That being said, of course I understand that there are mental, physical and emotional health benefits of having fun that would therefore allow one to label these activities as useful, but this was not why I was seeking these experiences…)

Well, surprise surprise, it turns out that if you wake up at the age of 34 with this motivation to reconnect with, well actually your younger-self, your body does not intrinsically follow suit. It is also true that a range of unexpected self-judgements can kick-in (translation: are definitely kicking in) as you are nowhere as good as you used to be or remember to have been.

I picked the song “New York, New York” because singing it somehow makes Me Feel Good. Imagine the sense of internal turmoil when my singing teacher asked me again at the beginning of the year:

‘What is your singing goal, Yasmina?’

I stared at her for what felt like an eternity (probably more like a couple of seconds), understanding that from the perspective of seeing whether we were making progress, I could see why we should be setting goals, but also feeling a strong tension against setting any goal other than “just doing something because it makes me feel good”. The irony of course is that at this point in time the perfectionist voice inside me is not yet allowing Me to Feel Good about It. Perfectionist me somehow judges the result is far from the expectation that I have from my younger-self and polices this journey to reconnect with the what used to be possible.

As I write today I am basically having this little internal fight between the side of me that wants to escape from the usual ‘goal-driven’ approach to life which led me to pursuing creative outlets that did not have any other purpose than making Me Feel Good; and the other side that somehow thinks I need to perform or be good at what I do. Both coming together in this internal dialogue trying to come to an agreement over the way forward.

A different take on this schizophrenic tension came to me while reading Catherine Price’s book on The Power of Fun as she defines as “playful, connected flow”. The books invites us to identify our “fun factors” which are the characteristics of our “fun magnets” which are themselves the activities, settings and people that tend to attract “True Fun” for us. Reading through the list of fun factors, I definitely ticked “Creativity” and “Loss of control” and then I got to “Performance” and “Demonstrating Mastery” and stared at the page for a while.

Is being good at something a fun factor for me?

Is it?

Does it have to be?

I’d really like it if it wasn’t.

[Reading this two years later, I can see that the little parts of me could not even fathom yet the process as the end goal, oh well, you leave you learn something at least – which doesn’t make it less painful of course.]

New York, New York. I’ll make a brand new start of it.

I am a life that wants to be lived.