Wanna play?
Who wouldn’t? Actually most professionals probably would not.
What would our perception of the world be like if we had playing as a central issue , , in our minds and hearts? And how could our social behaviour change through playing? No, I’m not talking about game theory or any other theory. I’m talking about playing. This blissful and wonderful activity which integrates easily everything worth to be called human. Actually that is what the German poet Friedrich Schiller suggested: through play we become fully developed human beings.
But don’t we have to work? What time and energy is left after a whole day of hard work?
Maybe we lost something really important when we stopped playing and started working. Let’s look at those multiple experiences happening while we play. If we remember, that is.
There is an incredible fun in play. Passion for the game and respect for our fellow players are mandatory. Communication happens on many different levels, including in intuitive and telepathic ways. Ideas flow and sudden sparks get ignited. We enjoy playing by ourselves or in groups. Rules and arrangements are created, changed or abandoned for something better. Complete immersion brings bliss and satisfaction. Winning or losing are just outlines and subject to new beginnings. We start all over again but different, better, always increasing the fun which would end with a total defeat of our comrades which is why we are not interested in total defeats.
We sweat and we think, we run and are deeply concentrated, we are impatient with selfimportance and anything else for that matter that keeps us from playing, developing and exploring. We try to find out as much as possible about our game or about whatever instruments we need to play. We invent new instruments, playfields, games, techniques, strategies. We relax and let go. And we improvise. While business everyday calls for our quantifiable functioning, we can go crazy while playing, re-inventing ourselves and our environment. We can act up or cool down, as long as it feels spontaneous and motivates ourselves and others to somehow do it differently. Or we crash the whole thing just to start from scratch which has a delicious innocence in itself.Science even convinces us that playing is boosting our health. As if we hadn’t known yet.
We are empty and strangely enough completely fullfilled when we finally are stopped by tiredness or
obligations. In which case we feel slightly demotivated. Alas, the next game will start soon.
Who would abandon such an amazing process of development, exploration, rising to the occasion, creativity and innovation, social bonding and immediate responsibility, discovery of talent and skills?
And exchange this for a specialized, repetitive and overall boring and soul-numbing activity called ‘work’?
Couldn’t we evolve by turning work into play? And thereby abandon lots of negative ‘sideeffects’ of our dysfunctional lives?
Web resources:
www.nifplay.org
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