Play
Hooky
“Consider
giving the child more room in your life, allowing yourself to be more dependent
and ill-behaved as a price for spontaneity and creativity…You could more often
be playfully serious and seriously playful. Or you could work hard for a few
hours and then play with abandon.”
Thomas
Moore (Soul Therapy, p.120; Harper One, 2021)
Has the
Puritan work-ethic played a role in your life? Some of us grew up in Depression
Era families, in which children (our parents) went to work at a young age or were
deprived of education because they had to add to the family coffers. My own
grandparents were among those who lost everything. My dad picked up the home
chores as a young boy, and worked hard right up until he died at age 74. There
were many nights that he still sat hunched over a drafting table when I went to
bed, drawing whatever he had surveyed during the day. Work was all he knew, and
he expected his daughters to follow suit. When we spent a day playing, we were
assigned something akin to penance in the form of extra chores. I believe he
thought it was important to teach us the seriousness of life, and that work is
how you manage it, but the result was to make play almost illicit, taboo. So,
as an adult, I worked at everything.
When my
children were young, I threw myself into assisting their play—whether games,
imaginative, creative play, or trekking off to a playground in a car stuffed
with neighborhood children. I had permission as a mother to play with my
children—because it was part of my job. It was not until I retired that I began to
discover my own ways of playing—and I haven’t stopped yet! I’m making up for
lost time.
According
to Thomas Moore in his book, Soul Therapy, it’s important to find a
balance between being an adult and being a child. We need to find ways for our
child—the one who still lives within us—to come out and play without feeling ashamed
or guilty. Of course, there exists a child within who is a brat. Who
pitches tantrums, pouts, and breaks things, but the inner child also holds the
artful, imaginative, creative, spontaneous part of us, and when we stifle it,
we become, well…pretty boring. A drudge. A workaholic. The image that comes to
me is a person with only a front and no back—like a cardboard character.
All of
us work too hard—both at home and at our jobs. Even when we enjoy the work we
do, it fires up a different part of our brain from play. All work and no play suppresses
the spontaneous joy of being alive. And no one wants that.
I hope
you play a little bit today—even though it’s a “work day.” Kids are known to cheat
a little bit. Indulge your inner child and play hooky.
In the
Spirit,
Jane
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