🤸 TREE 343: I’ve been shouting, “CALM DOWN!” at this panicking dog for an hour. The stupid animal isn’t listening.
One.
On of the most important ways mammals grow and develop is play.
You are a mammal.
When you are in a fearful state, your mind is in self-preservation mode. You are defensive or aggressive. The priority is to get safe. You have no capacity for taking in new ideas.
But when you are playing, your mind is open to new ideas. You try new things. Within play, you can experience all kinds of emotions – excitement, fear, happiness, anger, etc. – and they flow through you in a healthy way.
So why do we spend so much of our adult lives in non-playful modes?
I think a big reason is we are scared that playing isn’t for anything. It’s not proper humaning.
My 10 year-old daughter goes to a climbing gym every week. It’s an unstructured session where the kids have access to the whole gym. I noticed this week how she was deliberately choosing more difficult routes up the bouldering wall. No one told her to do that. She was playing. She was developing her climbing skills and her confidence.
You can trust your playfulness to be useful. But it takes faith. You can’t see the usefulness before you start.
Two.
Tawneigh’s bike is powered by thought. Consequently, Tawneigh moves very slowly.
Three.
The Beatles knew how to play.
Sometime earlier, technicians had played a tape backward accidentally, and every Beatle in attendance loved the sound. So George decided to try a backwards guitar solo on it.
The TREE hangout is tomorrow – 7:30 PM at the Albion in Conwy, North Wales!
Let’s play!
Jeff
Thanks for this Jeff - your post prompted me to comment after a long time sitting at the back....I used to play a lot and then everything around me got way too serious. When that happened it seemed that a decision to play was disrespectful towards the seriousness. But what I know in my heart is that without play my ability to find creative solutions disappears, I become dry and boring - my thinking is narrowed. Maybe if all the adults valued play more then there wouldn't be so many terrible politics and wars? Maybe if we could hang on to playfulness then our relationships would be more wholesome and long lasting?
Play is good. I can’t imagine an argument that it is not. Perhaps kabitzing about playing too much but that’s about it. I was an only child 7 years so I met the neighborhood kids with, “hi my name’s Dennie, wanna play?” My mom taught me play when we cleaned. Dancing to music while we worked was our play. She put the 33 rpms of Cole Porter, Louis Armstrong, Tijuana Brass and even my 45’s which were Beatles, which she liked! I still do this in my tiny home, my rv. It’s never going to leave me. Yesterday, Buckethead was my groove as I repacked, preparing to roll north in a few days. I’m always ready for playtime. How do you play?