Purposefully Playful

Not everything important has to feel like a burden.

In Christus Vivit, Pope Francis urged young people — and really, all of us — to be “serious enough” to grow spiritually, while insisting that this “does not involve losing anything of your spontaneity.” Serious, but spontaneous — or seriously spontaneous. He saw no contradiction there. Neither should we.

We treat seriousness as the mature default, the thing responsible people do. But G.K. Chesterton once apologized for a collection of essays, confessing that too many were serious — not because he preferred solemnity, but because “I had no time to make them flippant. It is so easy to be solemn; it is so hard to be frivolous.”

Chesterton knew what Paul knew: “God richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment” (1 Tim 6:17) — not for our grim endurance. Enjoyment isn’t a detour from the spiritual life; according to Paul, it’s baked into the design. Maybe the goal isn’t to outgrow playfulness but to grow into it.

Not everything will be easy. But grinning and bearing it is rarely the only frame available. Sometimes the more grown-up move is to grin and mean it.