Let’s
Play
“I’ve
learned from experience that happiness is an acquired skill. Children are one
of the greatest lessons in happiness, constantly challenging us to enjoy the
moment, as the next one will not be the same.”
Marianne
Williamson
In a
world like ours, happiness, or my favorite flavor of it—contentment—requires
some work. I find the most vexing problem disturbing my contentment involves
technology. It’s the very thing that is supposed to make our lives easier, and
yet everything from robocalls, to telephone menus, to “please hold for the next
available operator” followed by a long string of bad music interrupted
periodically by announcements and ads, make my life more difficult. So,
spending a day, or even an hour trying to do something that should have taken a
simple phone call is enough to tie my gut in knots for hours. I wonder if you
feel the same way.
What Marianne
Williamson said in the quote above is true—children are our best teachers—both about
technology and about how to live in the moment. My across-the-street-neighbors,
Stan and Marcia, are having major landscaping done to their yard—huge mounds of
dirt and gravel, lots of broken up concrete, a couple of bobcat dozers parked
in the front yard, and periodically, even a cement mixer churning away. Their
grandsons, ages 6 and 2, delight in watching the men who operate the machines at
work and have brought out their toy trucks and hauled gravel, and shoveled dirt,
and stacked concrete. They derive immense joy from simply sitting in the cab of
a dump truck—Nirvana! When children play—which is their job to do—they are
completely in the moment. Play is their reality; they become the workmen operating
heavy machinery.
For us
adults, it is this “lost in the moment” experience that relieves stress and releases
the “happy hormones” in our brains. The more we can do things we love enough to
become lost in them, the happier we will feel. I find creativity to be that
outlet. I don’t turn out masterpieces any more than the children across the
street turn out skyscrapers, but I love the process. Everybody has their own
form of play. Even when it looks like work—like hiking, skiing, biking—we experience
it as fun. And when we have fun, we feel happy.
I know
life is serious business, and that we are busy adults, and that some of us can’t
play all day and yada-yada-yada—but if we want to increase our happiness factor,
we must make time for play. We must have opportunities to lose ourselves in creative
imagination—to enter fully into our own pretend world. The child within each of
us still needs to frolic. The adult we are depends on that child within for
happiness. The weekend is coming up—let’s make a playdate.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment