Everything Derives from Play

Everything derives from play


Do you see how children naturally expend energy by running around and playing? What has happened to us as adults? Playtime has vanished to vacant comfort and convenience. What happened to that carefree youthful innocence?


We have been conditioned. Conditioned to the bogus and boring construct of work. The serpent of productivity and survival tempts is in a landscape of plenty. A program to derive value from work has made us act in robotic manners with serious intentions and no room of playful authenticity. In a world of compartmentalization within a semi malleable plastic economy, we separate work and play as if they are numbers in an algebraic equation. How drab. How formulaic.

Patterns upon patterns. Repetitions. When we see these patterns, we can play with them. We can make predictions and add freshness to the dullness we have built for ourselves. 

Time becomes our ruler. A schedule can be a tyrant. We eye the clock and wait in anticipation for the next thing. Off to this and then to that. A routine constrained by what we see as work days and days off. The week and and then weekend. The weak and the weakened. The routine then becomes our ruler. We think we need discipline. We run a program in our heads without question. Autonomous autopilot.

In grade school we had a playtime or “recess”. A slot of time to have us kids be kids for a little while. To act the energy we are meant to have as youngsters. When we are forced to sit in a classroom against our better wishes, we start to resent the rigidity. Exploration and curiosity gets squandered by the fullness of educational routine. It’s all by design. To break us like horses and conform to a certain way to serve the necessities of “society”. That magical imagined order that gets us to stay in line and not question why it is set up the way it is. And we just go on to believe that it is "good".



It’s funny how we see play as a period of time away from the drudgery of mundane modern life. Play then becomes a release from the tension we carry and less of a spontaneous alignment with the present moment. Like good label based humans, we invented the terms "free time" and hobbies to make sense of the time where we are not working. Leisure becomes more attractive and seductive when compared to routine and work now doesn’t it?


Play works better when it is integrated and not conveniently compartmentalized. We can see the play in all the small mundane and menial tasks. Humming through the repetitive tasks and dancing while we do the dishes. 

The idea of work has conditioned us to become more rigid. To be more disciplined and "serious". Where's the energy? Where is the passion? It's lost in the word and the idea of work. We eat it up and project it onto the world. From that projection, comes conflict and dissipation of our full potential. We put in so much "effort" to legitimize some benign sense of fleeting purpose.

The work and play paradigm is a false dichotomy of sorts. Both have a push and pull relationship. One depends on the weight of another in an eternal and cosmic tug of war in the heads of all who subconsciously believe it. We invent the concept of adulthood and maturity. There is a difference between being a fool and being a playful creature. Where we discover. The playfulness is where we grow. Where we learn about new things and ourselves. Playfulness is about not taking things so seriously and moving with instinct and unpredictability. How many times have we stumble upon new revelations without trying to do so? When we keep ourselves open to new experiences, we open a new door to awe and inspiration.

The ability to play authentically is not built around force or effort. That would be counter-intuitive. Playfulness is about acting out with some type of risk and unpredictability. It’s about pushing boundaries in all the right ways. It does not require a methodical approach or overthinking. If one were to overthink playfulness, one would trap themselves into a spiral of confusion and conflict. And not a sense of playful conflict.


Playfulness is opening up to whatever happens. Much like making lemonade from lemons, playfulness has a foundation in creativity and problem solving. There is a willingness to try new solutions without a threat of consequences. One can dance with the “bad” that happens to them. Rather, what happens for them. How you react is built into playfulness.

How we react is all about how we play. How we play with the external factors that we have no control over. How we play and get creative with the options in front of us.

Playfulness is the willingness to slow down and do something over that was giving us resistance beforehand. To do easy. To move without effort. Without the need to finish a task. The movement is enough. The vulnerability to venture into the unknown is paramount. 


Playfulness does not need to be measured. It is not focused on measuring the world around us. Playfulness does not care about lack or the insecurities we carry with us through our days. It's all about the acceptance of what we have right now. Playing with what we have in the moment. Dancing in a parking lot. Stopping to smell some flowers. Complimenting a stranger on their outfit. Admiring the cream that you pour into your coffee. The little things that add up to be big things. The things we tend to look over between the menial tasks we obey during the day. Imagine everything we are missing when we are just mindlessly following schedules, tasks and orders. Imagine what we could discover if we were lighter on how we handled the stress of our days. 


What are we resisting when we try to thwart off playfulness? Why do we try to check ourselves into a more "civil adult" state? Are we so insecure about how we appear to other people that we have lost the freedom to be silly, spontaneous and playful? As children, we learned most of our important lessons from play. This was essential for growth and understanding the world around us. Using our imaginations. Making up songs and stories in our head. Asking questions to life's biggest and often looked over mysteries. It's that resistance that strengthens the conflict in our lives. The resistance to what is. The resistance to who we are and what we could be if we just could drop everything and observe with a fresh and "playful" mind. 


When we feel something tugging at our intuition, we feel a sense of aliveness. A sense of awe, concern and wonder. Wondering what would happen if we trust what we think is right. Playfulness has quite a bit of intuition baked into it. When our senses start tingling, we are taken from the consistent compulsory patterned nature of thought. Breaking the thought cycle and being with what happens is how we access the realm of playfulness. When we stick in our heads for a long period of time, we get lost. We think until it hurts. We overthink and over-analyze throwing us in a storm of conflict and doubt. Choices swirl in our minds. When we get stuck, we forget to breathe and most importantly forget to play. The drudgery of choices no longer seems fun. It starts to feel like work. It starts to feel like we are wearing a skin that is too tight. We start to project how we think we should be acting in the world. Acting on what others have told us to do in this boxy and straight lined modern world. 


Essentially, playfulness is what we make it. Play. Full. Full of play. Full of energy. Full of creativity. 

There is a great bit of "carefreeness" in play. A surrender to the present moment. A surrender to whatever happens and being ok with it. An Acceptance on what is now and what will happen later and acting with what we think is right even if we are uncertain. Uncertainty drives playfulness. It allows for things to unfold. Organically and without force of effort. Moving with the waves and not controlling them. Surfing with the ups and downs while at least making it appear that we are having some type of "fun". 


WE GET IN OUR OWN WAY.

WHEN WE PLAY, WE GET OUT OF OUR AWAY.

THERE IS NO SENSE OF DISARRAY. 

WE ARE HERE and WE ARE HERE TO STAY!


SO why not take a load off...

and...

PLAY!!


DG