On a walk this afternoon with two fellow faculty members we found ourselves talking about the importance of demanding time for our own lives, recharging our batteries and finding the time to play. Pretty quickly we were talking about the books that we had read theorizing the importance of play, discussing the NPR reports we had heard about the links between creativity and play all while nodding thoughtfully. I was giggling as I pointed out the irony, which wasn't lost on any of us. But sometimes I wonder if I have been over trained to think.
I don't like that I can turn something like "play" into an intellectual exercise. But breaking large concepts down into smaller pieces and analyzing them, sometimes putting them together in new ways, is my job. I get paid to think this way; and truthfully I'm damn lucky that I do. At the same time, I hope that my ability to play isn't slowly leaching out of me.
One of my favorite things about my relationship with MarinerMagic is that we play together. He is silly and I am silly and together we encourage one another's silliness. I had had good relationships before he came into my life, but no one had ever played with me the way that he does while still holding me accountable for the important things. He keeps my play alive.
My fellow faculty friend was sharing that the NPR report had talked about how little we play in American culture. We are all about outcomes and productivity but we very rarely do something just for the sake of doing it; just because we enjoy it or we want to get lost in something that has no destination. As she was talking I had vivid memories of childhood with my younger brother. When we visited our grandparents in Florida we had some of the most fun together. Every morning my grandmother would prepare breakfast. Usually it was cereal but she always had blueberries, which seemed so decadent to us. The blueberries would be life rafts for the sailors (read: cereal bits) that were floating in an ocean of milk. The goal was to make sure that we always had a blueberry on each spoonful. It was a game. Not a game to get us to eat our food, just a game. She just wanted to play with us.
She passed away this summer and I think about her almost everyday. We played with our parents and we played with our friends, but playing with our grandmother was a different kind of play. She was an adult who understood that play was fun. And that was it. That was its purpose. When I was about 12 or 13 we spent the whole summer in Florida with our grandparents. We rescued many cereal sailors and grandpa would wear a cowboy hat and call himself "Tex" while cooking things like "rattlesnake burgers" (read: hamburgers with some peppers.) When I returned home after the summer I missed my grandmother so much that I taped her photo onto my the headboard of my twin bed.
We might lose the urge to play and we might even forget that play is, in fact, fun. It has no purpose that we can measure, tabulate or put on a resume. Going on vacation once or twice a year cannot replace some daily frivolity such as kicking a rock down the lane on your way to the office or pushing your hand against the wind as you drive down the road. The good days are the days when I remember to play.
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