afterwords:::15:::sides

**Dualities

I am prone to take it all a little too seriously, so when I read something like this quote from Henry James, I forget to whom he addresses his concern. In a manner of negotiating dualities I have to playfully step aside myself and observe how drawn I am to defend my position. Playfulness requires little defensiveness; it’s made of other stuff. So I offer the quote and then smile at my own gullibility. It’s a familiar scarf, wonderful on a cool evening, stangling as I dance though the woods.


“When one turns to the magnificent edifice of the physical sciences, and one sees how it was reared: what thousands of disinterested moral lives of men lie buried in its mere foundations: what patience and postponement, what choking down of preference, what submission to the icy laws of outer fact are wrought into its very stones and mortar: how absolutely impersonal it stands in its vast augustness-then how besotted and contemptible seems every little sentimentalist who comes blowing his voluntary smoke wreaths, and pretending to decide things from out of his private dream!”

He casts scientific activities out of the realm of play, and yet dining with scientists and hearing them talk about the process they deeply enjoy, they reveal threads of play. So an eleventh assumption sets play opposed to work, separating them.

As long as we maintain dualities of play and work or serious and silly we will forever be critical of one at the expense of the other and lose out on the benefit of each. The assumption of this duality that we reinforce erodes the value inherent in human creativity. Some opposites we learn create false dualities.


Our culture tends to define things in terms of dualities and will create them where they don’t exist and teach us to accept them. We teach that work represents responsible behavior while play represents irresponsible behavior. Play wastes time while work accounts for our time. Play becomes some illegitimate stepchild of work. Upon closer inspection, work might represent the cardboard version of play. Work mocks up, while play serves up the real thing. Play represents an irresistible irrepressible avenue of possibility that we haven’t yet fully entertained. Negative descriptions of play dissuade us as children from continuing to exercise our imagination to solve problems facing us. Far too quickly we get caught up in the right answers and the only way to do things. So what approximates truth?



When we consider the work play duality, we realize that it brainwashes us to accept that we would give up play and assume work as our proper activity to make life meaningful. If, however, we release the play work duality, the words lose some of their power. Play can gain its own seriousness and work can acknowledge some inefficient use of time The ease with which we reconstruct this duality amazes me. Take the most entrenched beliefs about play and work. Dissolve the duality by affirming that play can be an aspect of work and work an aspect of play. The work of some becomes the play of others. It seems obvious that if we could arrange what we do as work to be what draws us into play, we might all engage in activities in a more enjoyable manner.

afterwords::14::catching-up

Suggestion # z: Consuming Imagination

Spend a week without TV; spend it without magazines and radio. Spend it without music, without a computer, etc. Maybe we can only spend an evening this way. Add humor. Have a date with just imagination. If we can disengage from the anxiety with which we constantly bombard our self, we can see to what ideas and behaviors we gravitate. If a simple task begs to engage us, consider it; but forego it, if it requires too much paraphernalia. Maybe forego it just to see what happens next. Consider this a meditation retreat with an imagination master. It occurs simply and without props. Consider this an invitation to add only imagination. Keep the limits open for what make believe encompasses. Leave judgments aside. If we find we occupy a developmental stage of life that we left long ago, remember that the beauty of aging allows and encourages us to access all of our past development, when we choose. At first we may experience sensations from a time when we gave up on our imagination. ::Please persevere::

::The Good News:: Attention here reminds us how versatile and nimble imagination remains. This aspect of human nature benefits us when where and what ever we explore. The developmental stage of our imagination easily metamorphoses to join us in the present state of our life. And it does this with the least bit of respectful encouragement. Think of the experience as the reunion with a long lost friend. We may have some catching up to do. Though this special friend no matter how long we spend apart feels like a friend from whom absence creates no disruption. We fall in step like we never separated. And so we haven’t.

::Share notes from a retreat with imagination::

afterwords::13::packages

**Theatrical Plays

Reflect on plays in the theater and the notion of the stage. We certainly encourage living as though the world were a stage. The idea of a formal theater stage came as a means to frame the actors to enhance the focus on what we were being encouraged to believe as true. Television in a rigid manner draws on this notion, and it encourages us to believe (the tenth in this list of assumptions) in what we watch. Unfortunately we forget that the world is still the stage; and we become convinced that only by watching something, do we hope to achieve a state of playfulness. In my childhood home, we didn’t own a television yet, and a four-year-old visitor asked my mother plaintively: “But what do you watch?”

Many parents limit a child’s television consumption in order to keep the child's imagination accessible and active. So we have to encourage ourselves to take the stage back out of the television and put it out in the world where it truly exists. And we have to limit more than just our consumption of TV. We have to limit our consumption of all kinds of ::prepackaged ideas.

afterwords::12::repeat

Reconnect with playfulness

Life on all levels balances thoughts with feelings and thoughts and feelings with knowledge. Through behavior we express the knowledge derived from thoughts and feelings. I think of this dynamic as always being in motion. It doesn’t stop even while we sleep. Sometimes one aspect like a branch of a mobile needs a little tweak to move into a smoother orbit with the others. We begin where we start to notice something and move through our intents and wishes toward where our inquiries lead. Like with any mobile, we always arrive and depart.






**Never repeat

A ninth assumption about play derives from a wish not to repeat our self. This represents a tricky edge. Most of us remember hours of playing at the same activity without apparent loss of interest or focus. Part of this relates to developmental stages, but another part conforms to a way we have been taught to move on to new things. During repetition subtle distortions occur that clue us in to new perspectives. With the cycles of repetition, we begin to invent new activities:: Rest a little longer with repetitions.

afterwords::11::withwhat

**With What Do We Get to Play?

We all know that children play. They play unstoppably. Playing comes as naturally as breathing for them. Much of the time they play with anything available. Although we sometimes think that we need to provide them with all the current play paraphernalia, an eighth assumption. This stuff represents an epiphenomenon of marketing and does not essentially reference play. Most of us have clear memories of play that didn’t require the latest toy. In fact many of us have memories of play where the toys came from something meant for use as something else. We have other memories where even the toy existed only in our imagination. With imagination we embarked on behaviors we call play. If we didn’t get called home to dinner or bed, and even if we did, we played well into our sleep.



Suggestion # y: Toy reverie

Recall memories of childhood play with simple substituted ‘toys’ or with ‘toys’ made of only imagination. Include a detail. Consider a diagram with text explanation. Leave comments::

Afterwords::10::otherwordS

The sense of play that I like to bring up from childhood centers on a few vague and fragmented memories. As a six years old, I rarely got my 18 months older brother to play with me. His style of play and mine didn’t tend to mix well except on certain weekend mornings when while our parents sleep, we placed ourselves where the chair fit under the desk in the guest room. As best I can tell I would then entertain my brother with stories about travel. Neither of us have any memory of the content of these stories, though the event has come down through memory called “grandfather and little boy.” No toys existed in this game. I think the desk once became a plane and I know one time it became an ocean liner. Even with repeated attempts the details remain hidden, though I can touch a sense of peace and excitement, recalling successfully engaging my brother’s attention. Our usual game consisted of me teasing him and he threatening to clobber me. We played that often.


Now if the belief holds strong that play belongs in childhood, left in the past, consider using a different language for what we intend to describe here. Translate this into other words; and see if a description opens up a world of this other type of experience.


Suggestion # x: In Other Words

Comment with other words::

afterwords::9::longing

**Play as Longing
[A Seventh assumption] We leave so little time to play that we can’t sustain the internal experience of play; and therefore, only actually experience the longing to play. This longing becomes our belief about play, that play eludes us. Now we prime our self for disappointment; and we displace our own inner healing process.


A comment from a 30-year high school reunion comes back to me. A man wrote about going out and playing catch with his 11-year old son. It remained in memory a priceless treasure. It captures a window into play. The behavior unlinked from the game of baseball holds a moment of connection. Sports unfortunately tend to overemphasize competition and present play as skill. In this moment a father and son fulfill the American dream of connection. I remember the man’s father and imagine the longing this man held for his father's attention and then we can reflect on a healing legacy this passes forward.


In this process of inviting play back into our life, we will probably have to remind ourselves that we really still do remember how. We can state that pretending that we didn’t know how to play anymore represented a really long game we played. In retrospect it seems like a poor idea. We don’t have to play that any more.