Funn-Schwing: The Feelings and Sounds of Life

The theory of Funn-Schwing is idiosyncratic in many ways, meaning it is in the eye of the beholder. Since talking about the theory of “Funn” is just not fun at all, suffice to say that Funn (Functional Understanding Not Necessary) is an acronym that Karl Rohnke came up with, and it refers to events or activities that are fun simply for the sake of having fun. “Schwing” is my word that best describes the feeling I have deep down when I am getting the most out of each moment of each day. Everyone has fun in different ways. What I’m attempting to do by sharing my theory of Funn-Schwing is to help people rediscover that fun life.

Simply talking about Funn can feel like bungee jumping naked over a pool of piranhas – really engaging at the beginning with a rush in the middle and just painful by the end. So I’m not going to beat the concept of Funn much more than to say it is in the doing, and there are endless opportunities for Funn in life. The more Funn you have, the more Schwing you will feel. Those who are winning in life are those who are having the most Funn. They are Livin’ Life Large – getting the most out of every single moment of every single day. That’s Funn-Schwing. So let’s do some Funn and feel the Schwing deep down because everyone is entitled to Livin’ Life Large – it’s just a matter of believing that it is your right.

Funn-Schwing’s Three Good Spots to Start

As I have said, I truly believe that the people who are having the most fun in life are winning. I would count myself in that growing niche of the world’s population. Enjoying life through Funn is a very new concept in terms of the human condition because for many decades working to survive was all that mattered and playing took a back seat. That austere work ethic seemed to carry forward even as we became more “civilized.”

The Calvinists, for example, believed pleasure in this life was overindulgent and wrong. They felt that pleasure seeking was unduly extravagant because it was wasteful to spend their hard-earned profits from industry on this type of lifestyle. Instead, everything should be reinvested into church, family, state, and work. I read that they went so far as to wear vests that pricked their skin as a constant reminder to sacrifice pleasure in this life for the sake of a better afterlife.

Well, I’m not into that kind of extreme denial. It’s important to give back to your church, family, country, and work, but there has to be room for us to get pleasure out of life without feeling guilty. I’m not afraid to say that I enjoy my life. I enjoy what I do for a living. I even enjoy hanging with my mother-in-law. Why? As the adage says, “Life is for the living,” and I choose to be among the living. I grew up with some pretty serious weight on my shoulders for a kid. I learned after much reflection that I was taking things far too seriously.

That’s when I realized that life could be simple. The baggage I was lugging around was a burden, when there were lots of cool things to find pleasure in. I decided I wouldn’t wait for retirement to “enjoy” life. I retired out of university and committed to playing, having fun, and enjoying the simple things. In fact, when I was in Switzerland I bought my retirement watch – might as well enjoy it now! Who knows, when I’m 65 maybe I’ll get a “real” job, when I’ll need to tell time.

The following are Funn-Schwing’s 3 good spots to start, which are essentially “standard operating procedures” for a person who is Livin’ Life Large. These are not steadfast rules; rather they are for you to interpret what works for you, what makes your Funn so that you can feel the Schwing deep down.

1. Fun Is Fun Is Fun

The first starting place has to be that Funn is the name of the game. If you don’t have that clear and simple direction, you are liable to fall back into the “other life” that you are trying to leave behind. You see, life is full of fun, but you sometimes have to go out and make it for yourself.

My mom used to kick us kids out of the house to play every day when she got home from work. Do you remember that happening to you, too? What did we do? We climbed trees, skipped rocks, played house, traded cards, and played with our dinky cars. We were always able to have fun. We would come home with wicked grass stains, cuts and bruises, a story to tell, and that sense of Schwing. We were happy. When we “grow up” we seem to crawl down the evolutionary ladder and focus only on hunting and gathering, not laughing and joking. We lose sight of the fact that laughing and joking are what make hunting and gathering worthwhile.

For example, one day my roommate in university, Gus, and I were sitting around our residence feeling bored (and there were no moms to push us outside to play). I asked Gus if he was hungry. He responded with a degree of enthusiasm and we quickly settled on pizza. When I phoned in our order, the most monotone, unexcited, and unenthused person I have ever spoken with answered. Right then I made it my mission to attempt to get her excited, to break out of her apparent mold. No dice. She just took my order, told me it would arrive in 30 minutes, and hung up. I saw the moment as an opportunity for serious Schwing.

I turned to Gus and said, “Hey, that woman on the phone didn’t seem to be having very much fun and neither are we. You know in this little town the person who takes the order also brings the pizza. Do you want to have some fun?” Gus and I were instantly on the same page. We transformed our residence room into a pleasure dome meets haunted house. We shut off all the lights and turned on a single strobe light. We lit some strong incense and let it waft under our door. We played really eerie music to set the mood. Gus taped a furry black wig to his hand and put on a long white lab coat. We hid behind the door to await the pizza delivery.

Shortly, there was a faint knock at the door followed by a dull voice announcing, “Pizza.” I said in a really gruff, goofy voice, “Leave the pizza by the door.” The music crashed and boomed, the strobe light flashed, and the incense burned. We listened but there was no response.

Then another faint knock was followed by a more impatient, “Pizza.” So I screamed Yeti style, “Leave the pizza by the door!” With that I shoved $20 through the crack in the door. She grabbed it and started to set down the pizza. We boldly seized our opportunity for Schwing (and ideally hers, too, if she had and easy-going sense of humor). Gus flailed his furry mitt out the door accompanied by a blood-curdling scream, “Leave the pizza at the door!” The pizza dropped to the ground as the delivery person bolted to the elevator – and escaped our crazy prank. Well, Gus and I felt serious Schwing. (Unfortunately, it seemed the feeling was not mutual for our visitor.)

The moments for potential Schwing are ever present in life. It is just a matter of seeing them or making them happen; however, I wouldn’t recommend involving someone who does not share the same goal! The way I do it is to ask myself, “How can I make this ordinary moment extraordinary.” So I wear a clown nose and play the harmonica to ease tension while stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Try wearing a clean diaper on your head and having a diaper dance with your kids. Wear a Halloween costume in June to get your mail at the post office. (Don’t go to the convenience store with a mask on or you may have to answer to the police!) Do anything else that you can think of that is silly, outside the box, and just plain positive good fun.

2. Get the Most out of Every Single Moment of Every Single Day

Finding opportunities for Funn is great, but once you find those moments you have to max them out. In other words, seek to ride the Schwing for as long as you have the momentum. You see, Schwing is only Schwing because you strive to achieve it. When you achieve it, you feel that sense of loving it, but you also realize how great it is when it is finished, too. You don’t walk around in permanent Schwing. That would be like having an orgasm 24/7, and as much fun as that might be, the novelty would wear off. Besides, getting there, Schwing that is, is 90 percent of the fun!

So while the objective is to feel the Schwing deep down in the nether regions of our soul, we collect the Funn that eventually yields the Schwing. Collecting those moments is what we are in the continual process of doing. Funn-Schwing is as much about the process as it is the result. The process involves being on the lookout for enjoyable experiences or everyday occurrences in order to get the most out of every single moment of every single day. The more you are aware of what’s around you, the more alert you are for Funn-Schwing opportunities and the more you will experience them.

For instance, as I was driving to the dentist for my annual check-up one day – which I was looking forward to as much as my daughter looks forward to taking two seconds from playing to have her dirty diaper changed – I was listening to my favorite local radio station, Q104. They always got me up and going with this wild morning show hosted by Jamie, Harv, and Lisa. On this particular morning, they were giving away two tickets to the hottest outdoor rock show to hit the Maritimes. To win these highly coveted tickets, contestants had to play their favorite instrument and sometimes sing. The best call-in performance would win.

Now, for those of you reading this who also have had the misfortune of standing beside me at church, you know that I can’t sing. I would never dispute that; I sound like a cow in heat vacuuming up nails into a tin bucket. But I just had to have those tickets. That pursuit for good solid rock made me lose perspective. So please, don’t try this at home.

I picked up my cell phone while I was driving and dialed the magic number, which landed my call on air with the DJs. They welcomed me on their show and we bantered back and forth for a while before they asked me what I was going to play.

I said, “Actually, it is more about how I play my selection. I am going to play my harmonica while talking on this cell phone, wearing a clown nose, traveling 104 kilometers an hour down the highway, and steering with my knee.” With that I started this jazzy blues riff. My harmonica wailed for a minute or two. I stopped to hear Jamie, Harv, and Lisa cheering and clapping! And as you might have guessed, I won. To my surprise, I won not just two tickets but backstage passes as well!

That’s what can happen when you live every single moment of every single day to its fullest. And people will want to attach themselves to you to ride that residual Schwing in your wake as you “kick it” through life. By staying aware of yourself and the opportunities around you, you’ll accumulate a surprising assortment of experiences. My dad was a collector, everything from matchbooks to swizzle sticks. I’m talking boxes and boxes of stuff. Now, I didn’t inherit his desire to collect box loads of stuff, but I am an avid collector of experiences, which happens by focusing on every single moment of every single day. You could say I’m an experiences junkie, with an eclectic collection of things that have happened to me.

3. Unpack Your Bags and Stay Awhile

The third good spot to start is the one that really got me into Funn-Schwing. For some reason we all think that the more baggage we can carry through life, the more powerful we will be. When, in fact, the opposite is true. It is not the weight of the load that we can carry that empowers us, but what we learn from those things that happen to us in our life.

Visualize holding a stack of encyclopedias. These books represent all the problems that you are carrying. For me they include being sexually abused, not being able to read until I was in grade 3, getting 8 percent on an art test, being called a “tub of lard” growing up, being told I was illiterate in university by one of my professors, failing my driver’s test, failing math in high school, being asthmatic, and the list goes on. Now, picture a smaller stack of papers, with an executive summary written on each page. Each summary examines one issue that I related to you above (and the ones I didn’t tell you about to spare you eye fatigue and time – I have quite the list).

That’s what I did to get on the road to Funn-Schwing. I started to take each of my issues and personally examine them and draw the learning out of them. Carrying those issues around with me didn’t allow me to feel the essence of life. On the contrary, they prevented me from enjoying myself, those around me, and whatever environment I was in. With each encyclopedia-size issue I dealt with and transformed into an executive summary, I became more powerful, more successful, and more able to Live Life Large.

I must say, I owe all this to Oprah Winfrey. I was watching TV one day at university and her show was focusing on survivors of sexual abuse. I guess it was something I saw or heard one of the guests say that all of a sudden broke open my floodgates because there it was, my history of being sexually abused, images I won’t relate here, feelings I won’t share here, and experiences I hope you or ones you love never have. It was that moment that it all started to come together for me. It took a lot of processing to finally move on from the abuse. It took everything from talking about it, to reading about others’ experiences, to confronting my abuser, and I am stronger because of it. I am proud to have made it one of my executive summaries.

Negative events in our lives can really bring us down. A lot of people get stuck in the cycle of believing that just because they made a mistake they are one. Well, it’s not so. In fact, all of these things that happen in our lives can become learning gifts. There is no such thing as failure as long as you learn from your experiences. Bad or difficult things happen all the time. It’s what you do with them that enables you to either experience Fun-Schwing or not. For example, the recent sale of a land investment that could have made over $60,000 for me went sour. With the season for land sales over, it seems I will have to sit on it for another year. Obviously, I don’t like that this happened, but I’m not going to focus on it. I’m certainly not going to dwell on it. I’m going to learn from it. I’m going to do things differently next time.

If I let any issue take up too much space in my head, two things are going to happen. The first is I won’t sleep at night because I will be worried – I like my sleep. The second is I’m going to forget to grab hold of every single moment of every single day because all I’m going to see is that one issue.

Take some time to first of all find effective ways of coping so that you do not collect any more encyclopedias. As well, seek to unload your existing baggage by composing executive summaries. The lighter load to shoulder and the deeper insight will make all the difference in finding and feeling the Funn-Schwing in your life.