🛝 Play to grow

The Book of TREE 1.36

One.

I’ve been shouting, “CALM DOWN!” at this panicking dog for an hour. The stupid animal isn’t listening.

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Two.

One 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. We worry that It’s not proper humaning.

When my youngest daughter was 10, she went to a climbing gym every week. It was an unstructured session where the kids had access to the whole gym. I noticed a few weeks in that 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.

Speaking of Nick Cave, which I have been the last couple days, if you haven’t subscribed to his The Red Hand Files yet, I highly recommend you immediately leave this post and do it.

Grow slowly
Jeff