We Still Need to Play!

Why Don’t We Play?

What were your favorite toys or games as a child? As you think back, it may seem like those childhood days full of imagination and games are far behind you. It may be hard to imagine running around creating stories or pretending to be an astronaut as an adult.

However, even in adulthood, play is exceptionally important to our wellbeing and our spirit. When was the last time you took time to play in your life?

We spend a lot of time doing - at work we have checklists and deadlines, meetings to attend, emails to respond to, presentations to give, people to impress, the list goes on.

At home, we have our list of chores as well whether it be cleaning, cooking, laundry, and so on. It's easy to always be doing something regardless of the setting. In fact, society expects us to be doing at all times.

Too frequently, the message we receive and believe is that our inherent value is entangled with our productivity. Put simply, the message we explicitly or implicitly receive is often: “What you are able to produce is equivalent to what you are worth.”

When we approach life with this mindset, the completion of the next task becomes more important than the how or why we are doing the task and, more importantly, our productivity begins to not only dictate how we feel but can become even more important than how we feel or how we care for ourselves.

Too often we are human doings rather than human beings.

This is where play comes in, yes even and especially as an adult. As a kid with a home situation that allows for safety and developmental exploration, it may be easier to be free, have fun, and play blissfully everyday, multiple times a day. Play is how we learn, develop, explore, and understand as children. As we enter adulthood however, it seems the pull toward productivity and responsibility can quickly take up any room we may have previously had for play.

However, we have to find ways to integrate play into our lives. Our brains and bodies still need the creativity and recuperation that play provides. Even as adults, we can can learn, understand, and explore through play. Where do you find yourself giggling, being goofy, trying something new, or being imaginative and creative? Rejecting the pressure to produce and embracing play and being present is a radical shift we can begin to make within ourselves.

Play can help us to transcend the mechanical ways we often move through life and ground us in the present. It can be an excellent way to reintroduce joy and fun into our lives. Playing can remind us of the importance of experiencing the joy life has to offer, even in small ways, and especially when we feel a deficit of joy.

How to Play as an Adult

It can feel challenging or awkward to envision playing as an adult but play doesn’t have to mean pretending sticks are wands and running around playing Harry Potter (although it can!).

Play can mean creating space for creativity in your life whether through painting, pottery, drawing, sculpting, or even decorating. Your creativity could also take the form of building something or even problem solving in a creative way.

Play could also mean trying something new, taking an improv class, dancing, being goofy, or literally playing a game. Play is also a time to explore our values and self-worth. We often let go of play as our self-consciousness takes over.

Reintroducing play and embracing a mindset of process over product can do wonders for our sense of self. It may even lessen our impulses to engage in unhealthy coping mechanisms.

For example, maybe those few drinks to wind down after a stressful day seem less important and aren’t needed if you have a place to truly unwind - a place to let your mind be active in a way that isn’t connected to productivity.

Barrier to Play & Joy

In my mind, there are two major barriers that stand between us and play. One, as was already mentioned, is the challenge of subverting the productivity that society and capitalism demand of us and simply being present to ourselves and to our surroundings to find joy within and around.

If given the chance, our capitalist culture will squeeze every ounce of productivity out of us with no regard for self-care or recuperation, let alone play. Playing is one of our best defenses against this assault on our humanity.

The second major barrier however, is vulnerability. Playing can be uncomfortable for us because if we are not regularly practicing play, it can feel unnatural or awkward. When we play, we enter a space of unknown, shifting from the logical and linear thought process so commonly expected of us to a more abstract, free flowing, and creative line of thinking.

In this shifting, we move from a space where everything has an answer or solution and must be done a certain way. When we play, there is no rule book, no contract, no job description, or checklist; it is the true freedom to choose that lies within us and explore what could be, and that means that there is not necessarily a correct answer.

Play encourages us to be silly and unique, even to stand out, and that can be an exceptionally vulnerable thing to do. However, it can also be exceptionally freeing.

Dancing Through Life

It may be useful to imagine dancing through life. Even on days when we feel grief, hopelessness, stagnant energy, annoyance, and irritability, we can dance through the day. This could look like perceiving others as fellow dancers in the dance of life, trying new formations and choreography. Or, quite literally, dancing between meetings, singing down the street, and wiggling and stretching and grooving.

Dancing can be a tangible way to bring play, movement, and creativity to your life. By envisioning those around us as dancing through life, we can perhaps enter into the vulnerability of dancing and playing more easily, knowing that no one has choreographed this dance of life in the same way. And we can enjoy that the beauty of the dance lies in the collective uniqueness of each person's choreography and creativity.

I encourage you to make space in your life to play and notice the joy, freedom, and confidence that accompanies play. What are some ways you might integrate joy into your days? Do you know other adults that create space to experience the joy of play? What might play, process, and creativity look like for you?