Learning To Play

One thing you learn being around young kids a lot is that we as adults have a lot to learn about how to play. Kids can anticipate an ice cream cone all day; we as adults can feel like we have little to look forward to, or not even notice the small pleasures in life. Kids play with disinhibited single-mindedness; we as adults get distracted, are always multi-tasking. Kids can imagine anything with very little hardware; we as adults rely on devices, on having images and stories fed to us, and find it harder to believe what we can't see. Kids get lost in the moment; we as adults let worries about the past or future interfere with the present. Any kid would forget the mundane in favor of what's fun; we as adults get so dragged down by the mundane we forget to have fun. Kids laugh a lot-- Elijah giggles now if you just look at him a certain way; Eric likes to crack himself up while doing goofy things like wearing his socks on his hands or walking around with a blanket draped over his face; Ellie goes into peals of laughter over certain sound effects or illustrations in books. We adults can go through a whole week without laughing.

Learning to play is important. It's important to our experience of Christ; I've been reading a book called Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places by Eugene Peterson that explores this concept well. God is a playful God, and we experience him and his creation when we play, in a way that we don't otherwise. It's important to our marriages-- there is the concept of marriage as sanctification, that marriage doesn't exist to make us happy as much as to make us holy-- but I'm learning that just as important is the metaphor of marriage as companionship. We are companions, and that means we play together, we laugh together. I heard Ted Cunningham, the author of Fun Loving You, give a good talk about that on Focus on the Family. It is important to our sex life; Dr. Rosenau writes well about that in A Celebration of Sex. It is important to our families; laughter dispels tense moments, helps us not take ourselves too seriously, and cultivates joy. I heard once about a family that had a rule that they must laugh together every day, and I thought that was great.

What does it mean to play? It means to anticipate fun and then experience fun with nothing held back. It means to enjoy the moment with enthusiasm, humor, verve. It means to do something for the sole purpose of recreation or amusement. It means feeling safe and secure enough to be silly, to take risks, to stop being self-conscious. It means to create: a moment, a story, an object, an experience. Play helps us focus on something outside of ourselves; it invites people to join, bonds people together.

I think play comes more easily to some adults than others, but all of us can be more intentional about it. Incorporating play can mean putting the laundry aside so we can focus all our energy on playing with our kids. It can mean preparing materials in advance so we can play more creatively together. It can mean purposely doing something goofy for the sole sake of making our spouse laugh. It can mean pointing out the humor in a situation that would otherwise be tense or awkward. It can mean scheduling time to do any type of fun activity: horseback riding, thrift-store shopping, driving into the country, sitting by a body of water, board games, tickling sessions, cooking lessons. I think the imaginative- and craft-oriented play comes pretty naturally to me, but it’s good for me to remember to plan for outing-oriented, event-oriented play, and in general that it’s okay to pause in the day’s agenda if it means we all have some fun.