SEPT 9 — I am perplexed whenever someone says “Been there, done that,” as a way to explain their disinterest, of anything actually.

There is so much in every experience that I can’t see how you could have done something you like enough times that its attraction is lost. From drinking coffee to chasing down neighbourhood mongrels with your car, you can always do it somewhat differently to make it fun, again and again.

Life is a continuous procession through time with various guest artists — popping in and out — and all moments are uniquely different, all things lively.

I don’t as a life principle believe that any particular experience can be exhausted, or that its dimensions are limited to what it expressly forwards to you.

Life, my life at least, is more than that. And since the things around me define my human existence I refuse to reduce my fascination for them. I am enamoured by the living in me and that which goes on around me.

The stripped-down focus: Life is fun irrespective of your station in life.

This is not an essay on what life is, or an answer to the recurring existentialist angst the mortal soul experiences. I’m saying you can find reason to smile more, before the universe swallows you up at the end.

I grew up with hand-me-down stuff — toys, textbooks, etc. My parents were careful that clothes were not included in that count. Somehow the cultural stigma attached to used-clothes was stronger.

My grandpa used to give us busted-up toys, like a plastic gun I remember well (made in Taiwan no less) — the better stuff he could find from work, he was a city hall waste collector. I’d also go over to my friends who had toys. But I’d have a blast. Just a complete blast.

Up to a point my friends thought I was having more fun with their toys than them. This Aesop-like situation led to some recrimination at times. I’d lose a few invites but hey, you can’t win them all. 

But why did I enjoy all types of toys and games?

When I think about it, I always put the onus on myself and not the toy. It was incumbent on me to enjoy the toy, and not expect the inanimate object to co-ordinate efforts to make me smile.

So if you run out of interest in the toy, then it is not that the use of the toy has ended, it just means your ability to see the toy in a whole new range of ways is limited. The toys are just conduits to fun. People make fun.

But it seemed to me many were just expecting a replacement toy to remedy any loss of excitement. Which is where I think much of the “been there, done that” comes from.

Of course this sometimes leads to low expectations of all experiences. Always an eager beaver to accept conditions, like on my first “flight and hotel” trip to Australia in the 90s. Rather than the sexier destinations of Melbourne and Sydney, we university debaters were dropped into Hobart, Tasmania.

The fact that everyone said to me it was the arse-end of the country did not dampen my perhaps ill-placed enthusiasm. I was there for a week and I was ready to “take in” the whole experience.

I blinked not when they gave us upon check-in at the hotel a box of cereal and two bowls per room. Poor finances meant the debate competition did not have a breakfast budget so we were asked to come down every morning to get the milk. While everyone was thinking “bloody hell,” I was thinking “wow, free Kelloggs.” 

Going back to school, my friends were always talking about buying something new. It just did not compute for me since it was abundantly clear they already were in possession of many things, which they had not really used yet. I’m not sure they were interested in the objects or the “ideas” associated with the object. Like Disney and movie merchandises.

If it is the idea, are they not in possession of it all the time, since ideas or the perception of ideas is born in their minds?

Anyway, the recurring theme was they got bored with that something, and were always on the lookout for a different object to sate them — whether they were consciously aware of it or not.

Again, I am not making a wholesale attack on the consumer society we and almost any capitalist society is built on. It is the buying of things that lets me have a job and pay my bills. So thank you for spending.

I’m saying sometimes we lose our ability to enjoy the familiar because we’ve let our sense of enjoyment become static or determined by prevailing think. You don’t have to lose your sense of wonder just because it is something you have done before or done over and over.

It is incumbent on you to find reasons to enjoy the things you do like, rather than wait for the things you like to pop out and speak to you when you become jaded.

Stop liking your joys, and in time you will start to dislike yourself.

I still play football on the pitch I played on as an eight-year-old and I still use a newer variant of the cheap rubber boots I wore all those years ago. That does the trick. All the fancy shoes, balls and jerseys cannot give meaning to a simple thing like playing a game. To enjoy it, to look forward to it. To have your own Rosebud.

* The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the columnist.