Living With Gusto

Living with Gusto

The Super Bowl is coming up soon, and although I'm not a regular season football fan, I am one who enjoys participating in an exciting event. And since I've never been asked to play in a Super Bowl, what I do instead is put on a Super Bowl party complete with side bets, decorations and tasty snacks in football shaped bowls. The party is for me and my sons (and anyone else who happens by) and we always have a great night whooping and hollering for our team.
We started doing this a few years ago and now, whatever the event, be it the Oscars, The Stanley Cup Playoffs, The World Cup or The Olympics, we make a great big deal about it. We do this because I truly believe that the amount of fun one has is in direct proportion to how much one 'gets into' the events around them.
I learned this at Second City Improv School when my husband and I took classes there several years ago. The beginners' class (the only one I took) consisted of a series of games designed to jam the thinking brain so that people learned to respond from a spontaneous place. Our teacher was the award winning, extremely talented, improv performer, Lisa Merchant, and no matter what game we played, Lisa participated as though that game was the most important thing in the world.
Her movements were big, her expressions were animated, and her desire to win was evident. Because she played with such gusto, each and every class exercise became an hilarious battle for victory. She showed us that when you commit to an event and really engage it with all your energy, even a modified game of tag can become a memorable and gut-splitting experience.
It's because she modelled this, that I paint my boys' faces in team colours during the Stanley Cup playoffs. Based on her example, we don't just watch the Oscars, we have a contest to predict the winners and we play Oscar bingo, gaining points for each time a winner thanks their mom or says, "I can't believe I won."
I'm trying to do for my boys what Lisa did for our class. I'm trying to show them through example, that enjoyment stems from a choice to participate, and that throwing oneself into the game can make any occasion special.
Think for a moment if you will, of a time when you fully let yourself engage, a time when you played hard at whatever you were doing. Now in contrast, recall a time when you sat on the sidelines, a time when you decided that it wasn't really worth it to participate. Which time felt most alive? Most people would say the former, even if when they played hard they got battered.
Life is only as mundane as we decide it is. When we choose to believe that a sporting event means something, or that a band is the best we've ever heard, or that a party is going to be a blast, or a season finale is important to watch, then it is. And when our lives are filled with things we deem meaningful, we are richer for it.
I hope I'm teaching my boys to engage what's going on. I hope they see that there is value in participation and in being a part of their culture's experiences. I hope that I'm raising the kind of children who would attend their generation's Woodstock, but most of all, I hope that I'm raising children who will live each moment like it matters.
Crystal
Copyright 2007, Crystal Eves