Gamboling Problem?

It's great to be known, isn't it? My best friend Jenn Manlowe, an editor and author, has duked it out with me in many a Scrabble game. We actually call it "squabble". Not that I'm competitive or anything...(cough).

Anyway, she sent me yesterday's Word of the Day from dictionary.com. I love that she not only knows I would enjoy such a diversion, but the word itself: GAMBOL:

gambol \GAM-buhl\ intransitive verb

1. To dance and skip about in play; to frolic

2. A skipping or leaping about in frolic

What a perfect time for this to be the Word of the Day! Just when we want to hunker down, try harder, worry and fret, stare at our 401K statements, and do anything other than frolic. What's there to frolic about?

Skipping and frolicking are Pollyanna stuff, right? Things that only children do. And we are grownups, with serious business, life and death responsibilities, on our shoulders. If you went out today and saw an adult skipping down the sidewalk, you'd look around uncomfortably and cross to the other side, wouldn't you?

As this economic crisis has called into question the entire framework of our culture, what if this time also presents the chance to consider that we, as a people, have a gamboling problem? Sure as Americans we're famous for leisure and excess of show-stopping proportions. But are we capable of joy, of wonder? When all else is stripped away, can we surrender our fear, our need for security, long enough to gambol with delight?

Admittedly hard to do, when you're worried about where the mortgage is coming from or how to put gas in the car. But after all our best efforts, we are ultimately powerless over those things. What could it hurt to try something counter-intuitive? Like a lot of spiritual practices, a good dose of pointless giggling may not "make practical sense" but may be the best antidote to our woes. Could gamboling actually help strengthen my faith?

"Everything can be taken from a man but ...the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

--Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Why not? Today I commit to gamboling...hmmmm, what would that look like? Dancing around my living room (private so nobody can call the guys in white coats), blowing bubbles (more public, but socially acceptable and enjoyed by most people who aren't sociopaths), maybe take a child to the park--let her grab my hand and skip. (You can get away with it, if you've got a kid with you!) Hang out with people who like to laugh and play for no reason at all.

"I've been told dolphins like to gambol in the waves in these waters,

and that sighting them brings good luck" --Barbara Kingsolver, Where the Map Stopped

Happy gamboling ya'll.