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Volkswagen has a great experimental project called the fun theory. The idea behind the endeavor is that “something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better.” They encourage visitors to the site to “be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

One of the examples I like the most is making stairs into a piano keyboard to make people take the stairs over taking the escalator.  Check out the video below… I think its ingenious.

And yet, while I love the idea, here is the problem… I already take the stairs. In fact, I usually work out, I generally eat pretty healthy, and shower with a good deal of regularity. I even recycle moderately frequently, and brush twice aday. Heck, I keep floss in my shower so I remember to do that with increasing regularity.

The things I struggle with are more interpersonal. Telling people that I care about them. Getting bogged down by the day to day and failing to see those moments of transcendent in the everyday. Moving day to day, and then realizing that time has too quickly slipped by without having pursued things that really matter. Or maybe not thinking about what matters to us enough. How do we pursue those things with ‘fun’?

In line with VW, I think we should all go out and play ‘tag’ with someone today. You know… tag, the things that kids play. Go, find someone you care about and leave them a note. Tag them. And make sure they know the game doesn’t end there. Maybe they have to get you back, maybe someone else. Regardless, maybe living like a kid for a bit allows us to recaptured that “period of human life intermediate between the idiocy of infancy and the folly of youth — two removes from the sin of manhood and three from the remorse of age” (Ambrose Bierce). Maybe there is something to that.