Little Happier: Agatha Christie Shows How the Games of a Child Can Become the Work as the Adult

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin / The Onward Project

Education, Health & Fitness, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2022

⏱️ 3 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What we loved to do as a child, for play, we often love to do as an adult, just the way Agatha Christie loved to murmur to The Kittens Get in touch: @gretchenrubin; @elizabethcraft; [email protected] Get in touch on Instagram: @GretchenRubin & @LizCraft Get the podcast show notes by email every week here: http://gretchenrubin.com/#newsletter Leave a voicemail message on: 774-277-9336 For information about advertisers and promo codes, go to happiercast.com/sponsors Want to be happier in 2022? Order Gretchen Rubin’s book The Happiness Project to see how she approached the question, “How can I be happier?” and start a Happiness Project of your own. Happier with Gretchen Rubin is part of ‘The Onward Project,’ a family of podcasts brought together by Gretchen Rubin—all about how to make your life better. Check out the other Onward Project podcasts—Do The Thing, Side Hustle School, Happier in Hollywood and Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. If you liked this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Gretchen Reuben and this is a little happier.
0:03.8	One thing that always interests me is seeing how the activities and games that we love
0:07.9	as children influence our lives as adults.
0:11.7	I often ask people, what did you do for fun as a child?
0:15.4	Because if you love doing something as a child, you probably enjoy doing it as an adult,
0:20.2	adapted for the adult context, of course.
0:23.4	I came across a great example of this principle.
0:27.5	I love memoirs and one terrific memoir is Agatha Christie's and autobiography.
0:34.4	I don't love mysteries, so I've read only a few Agatha Christie novels, but I love this
0:39.2	memoir.
0:40.2	And she offers a great example of how the games of childhood can become the work of
0:44.9	adulthood.
0:46.5	In writing about her early days, she describes that she spent a lot of time with her
0:50.2	nurse, Nursy.
0:51.9	She writes,
0:53.2	When I had exhausted the delights of playing in the garden, I returned to the nursery where
0:58.0	N was Nursy, a fixed point never changing.
1:02.2	Perhaps because she was an old woman in rheumatic, my games were played around and beside,
1:07.6	but not wholly with Nursy.
1:10.4	They were all make believe.
1:13.6	Agatha Christie describes how she played games with the kittens.
1:18.0	There was Clover, Blacky, and three others, their mother's name was Mrs. Benson.
	...

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