Play

I define play as any activity that is done for no apparent reason and for no desired outcome. So, playing Scrabble isn't play if you are determined to win, yet digging a hole in the ground can be play if you are digging the hole for no apparent reason and no desired outcome. You might just want to see how far you can get, or explore the worms down there.

Children engage in play often and well. I would argue that play helps children tremendously as they set about exploring and experiencing their world. Adults tend to forget the random quality of play. It is spontaneous, has no purpose other than the activity itself, and immediate. That's why, when a child says, "Come play with me," and an adult says, "Maybe later," the child feels frustrated and denied. In play, there is no later; there is only now.

Play returns us to being for the sake of being, doing for the experience of doing. It frees us from the always just in front of us outcomes for which we seemingly toil. And the activity may look like play, but actually be something very different. The activity may look like work, but be play to the person doing it. Play is self-sufficient, self-centered and self-referrent. It seeks nothing outside of the activity itself and the moment in which the activity is engaged and engaging.

Climbing a mountain is play if you don't mind at all whether you reach the top or not. Cooking dinner is play when you don't mind at all how it is received or when it is placed on the table ready to eat. If you are doing something because you feel like doing it and you don't care what happens with it, you are playing.

Play is freedom. When I am playing I feel free. You can play pretend, but play doesn't have dip into the realms of fantasy. It can be busy exploring the reality above, beside and below us.

One day last spring, after a heavy rain, I went out in my rubber boots and my rain coat. I had a shovel and the notion to see what I could make out of the flooding stream that ran down through the woods just south of my house. I played with it for a long time. Time disappeared while I was digging and messing about with old dead leaves and mud and the slipping, sliding water. I made a little stream bed to channel the flow. When a later rain storm breached the banks of my channel I was delighted. "Breach!" I yelled loudly to the darkening sky. I was not attached to any outcome for my earlier activity with the mud and leaves and stream. I was exploring, trying things out, learning about it. I was playing.

Playing is an activity of profound joyfulness. When we play, we explore what is there, what is happening, how things behave when other things happen. We discover and invent. Most importantly, we don't mind what happens. We don't mind what happens. We are and we do and we enjoy being and doing.

A person can spend almost every single moment of their day in an attitude of play, of not minding what happens, of being and doing and enjoying being and doing. Why don't we do more of this?

I remember, in school, being told that I had done something 'wrong.' In play, nothing is 'wrong,' it is just different than expected, perhaps. I differentiate playing a sport, a musical instrument, a game that has winners and losers, from actual random and self-inspired play. I think that we are taught not to play, because we are taught that we have to do things in a certain way, otherwise they are done 'wrong.'

I find, more and more, that when I am in an attitude of playful enjoyment of what I am being and doing, I am tuned naturally to the frequency of joy. The qualities of joy are there in abundance. There is acceptance, enjoyment and appreciation for what surrounds me and there is exploration and attentive experience of what surrounds me with no thought for any outcome other than the immediate response to my activity.

I place a muddy stone there and the water swirls and curls around it and flows over there instead. Hmmm. Interesting!

I cook some rice in lemon juice and water instead of using regular water and then I taste it. Hmmm. Interesting! Hmmmm! What would happen if I added pepper? Lemon pepper? Basil? Hmmmm.

What would happen if I made a beaver dam of sticks and muddy leaves to stop the flow of water? Hmmmm. Let's find out.

Faced with a big, difficult task, I became stressed and anxious. I had to deal with a sea of mud and the imminent autumn rains and no rain gutters on the house because we decided they were too much trouble to clean out every year and because the ice and snow would clog them. Floods of water pouring off the roof of the house into the mud were splattering my nice new siding with dirt. I kept stepping in puddles. Arghh!

I didn't know what to do and it was a real problem. Oh, and I had no budget for any work or materials to improve the situation. Zip. Nothing. I hadn't thought about it and was caught short after paying for all the big machine site work and the construction of the house.

I decided that the only way that I could deal with it without becoming really stressed, like, anxiety attack stressed, was to play with what was there in a spirit of exploration of the various potential solutions to my problem. "Relax," I told myself, "It's bad, but it can only get better."

There were some loose stones left over from when the site work was done. They lay in an inappropriate spot, but not too far from the house and slightly uphill from the house. That mattered to me, because I decided to move them. I raked them into piles and then shoveled them into my wheelbarrow and thus moved them to the side of the house where the rain water had made a muddy mess. I laid the stones there and spread them out to form a covering. The next time it rained, the water washed the stones clean and they shone blue-grey. Hmmm. That looked nice.

I did the same thing to the other side of the house where the water came off the roof in the same way. Then, I found pretty rocks, not too big, all over the newly cleared property and brought them in and made a sort of Zen rock garden along the side of the house. Hmmm. I liked that and it kept the soil from making mud everywhere. Hmmm.

The winter snow and ice brought a halt to my explorations of what could and would be done there. In the spring, I continued to play with it, changing this and moving that. Eventually, having saved some money for the purpose, I purchased some pretty river stones from the local excavator and brought in more large rocks. Then I brought in some good garden soil and some plants and mulch. Now I have a really wonderful rock and plant garden there by the side of the house and I did it bit by bit and only as I felt enjoyment in doing it. I played with it and enjoyed the play, which looked like work to some. It stretched my muscles, my creativity and my patience and it was great fun.

As I contemplate the entire project of landscaping this property, I have to keep reminding myself of what I achieved with the work at the sides of the house and, more importantly, how I achieved it. As I did that work, there were some things that I tried that didn't work so well, or were too labour intensive for me to continue. There were times when I had to stop because of the weather or time constraints and it looked pretty awful - unfinished. I accepted it all completely because I was playing with it. I knew that if something didn't work out, I could try something else and it didn't matter, wouldn't matter. I remind myself that it can be a grace, a joy, a playful encounter with this property, rather than a struggle, a job, a hard, long work to get it done. As a gardener, I know that some things take five years to come to fruition so that we can look at them and decide whether we like that outcome or not. Five years! Some things take ten years, twenty years. So, it's not really about the final outcome. It's about trying things out. I knew a man who said that if you hadn't moved a plant at least three times, to different parts of the garden, it was probably in the wrong place. That was a whole different way of looking at the process than thinking, school-girl like, that I had to get it 'right' the first time. 

I remind myself that I can play at just about anything that I do. It is an attitude that can be applied to anything. We do this thing because we choose to do it. We do it with an attitude of open exploration and interest in what happens, but we don't mind what happens. We will respond to what happens. If a big rainstorm washes out my flowerbed (it did), I move the flower bed and replace the washout with rocks that can withstand the force of the water and will glow in pearly grey and slate blue afterward. I enjoy the to and fro of the dialogue that I am having with the rain and the stones, the shape of things and how they are moved by time. And we learn from what happens. We grow. We experience.

Imagine not minding what happens EVER. Imagine being always in that attitude of open acceptance and discovery. Buddhists call that 'beginner's mind," and hold it in high esteem, for it welcomes all that is and all that happens with complete acceptance and interest. "Hmmmm," it says, "Interesting. Let's try this, then."

I took a course in college from a very wise man, a priest with a rebellious and questioning streak in him. His name was Father Menke and the name of the course was, "Man in Pursuit of Playfulness." We studied Greek and Roman myth and various philosophical variations on the theme of man's endeavours to understand the world and open-minded courage in the face of the unknown and the unknowable - which is the next moment, always, and then the next after that. I wondered, though, where playfulness came into it. I wondered why Father Menke chose the word 'playfulness' for the title of this course. I think I know the answer to that question now, 35 years later. Playfulness is a freedom such as we all dream of in our deepest and largest moments of truth. Playfulness is brave, loving, deeply wise and wisely accepting.

It begins with a momentary choice to let go of the fear of getting it 'wrong.' It ends with indescribable joy and freedom.

Play. Play at playing. Play at playing at play. Pretend you already know how.