It's okay to play

Though it may not be apparent from some of the ridiculousness on this blog, I have an unfortunate tendency to over-think things and turn my brain into a mental stew. This happens especially when I am left on my own for extended periods (which happens to be every workday). I wish I could say that I become cerebral in a witty, Woody Allen kind of way, but it's in more of a Malcolm Fraser kind of way. For any readers who aren't Australians born prior to 1980, he was the elected leader of Australia whose super-fun motto was "Life wasn't meant to be easy."* It helped with the whole effect that he looked about as happy and carefree as one of those chiseled statues on Easter Island.

Just try having a fun picnic near this bust of Malcolm Fraser in the Ballarat Botanical Gardens.

A thought hangs over me sometimes when I'm looking at beautiful birds through my binoculars: birds don't get the chance to do frivolous things like this, so why should I? Nature is all about survival. There's no time for leisure. No time for pointless activities.

If you're not building a nest, you're going to extreme lengths to find a mate. If you're not hunkered down over your eggs in a relentless storm, you're fighting off a predator. If you're gorging on food, it's not just because you feel like it but because you have to survive a long migration across the ocean.

So if you're a Hooded Crow in snowy Russia and you find the lid from a jar of mayonnaise at the dump, you . . . use it like a snowboard, of course!

It's so pointless!

So utterly, fabulously, joyously pointless!

There will be enough hard days. There will be plenty of time when all the serious business of life is like a heavy black overcoat. So the next time I find a metaphorical mayonnaise lid, I'm going sledding.


*After retiring from politics, Mal was found wandering, dazed and trouserless, in the lobby of a seedy Memphis hotel favored by hookers, so apparently even he could maintain such dourness for only so long.