Recently a friend drew my attention to an article in the Washington Post that described a “Fun Scale”. According to this scale, things that were just fun, pleasant, and carried no significant risk were categorized as Type I Fun. Think dinner with friends, playing board games, going for a walk. Type III Fun were things that theoretically might have been fun, but resulted in such a bad outcome that you might well swear off such activities in the future. Think getting lost in the wilderness, sustaining a sports injury, etc. Type II Fun was described as the sweet spot of something challenging enough to demand your full attention while delivering an exhilarating reward for accomplishment. I thought of learning to downhill ski, play volleyball and ….painting.

There is no doubt that painting well demands hours of study and practice. For those of us who are addicted to this activity, the exhilaration of occasionally producing an incredible piece of art, of saying just what we wanted to say, just as we wanted to say it, is such a huge payoff that the journey both seems even more worthwhile and simultaneously incomplete, leading us to continue to push forward. And we are having so much fun!

From teaching beginner classes, I became aware that I needed to qualify my contention that “this was going to be fun”. I had had students drop out after a couple weeks who complained that they came for fun, but discovered it was hard instead. I then modified how I described my classes to reflect that learning to paint is hard, and followed up with “it is the most worthwhile kind of fun I know of.”

The Fun Scale adds additional language to express this concept. Painting requires the determination, bravery, endurance and equanimity in return for the occasional exhilaration of creating amazing art by your hand at your easel. It is completely worthwhile. And it is Type II Fun.