When my children were school age, the stress that appeared in January/February over which summer camps to sign up for, which would sell out the fastest, and which would be fun while also manageable with my work schedule definitely was not fun.
I hated the FOMO that would arise for me on behalf of my daughter. What if we didn’t sign up soon enough, and she ended up shut out of the camp her friends were in? I didn’t want to be that mother who missed the opportunity for my child.
As I look back now, the pressure I put on myself was ridiculous.
Back then, I was trying to make sure my kids had FUN. I can say now that I was a bit jealous of the activities they got to do – free swimming in the pool, candle making, pottery throwing, glass blowing, horseback riding, white water tubing, tie-dying T-shirts, Boondoggle, roller skating…
WAIT a minute. Those are the camp activities I did in the 70s!
I wish I could have a carefree, fun summer like that again. Maybe you do, too.
Play is not a frivolous pursuit. It’s an essential part of our health, happiness, and our relationships.
Author Catherine Price defines fun as, “the confluence of playfulness, connection, and flow. The more playfulness, connection, and flow we can work into our daily lives, the happier we will be.”
And there’s lots of science to back this up but I won’t go into that here, because to me that’s not fun. 🙂
The Importance of Play in Our Lives
If it feels like you have less leisure time and fewer unstructured “play” hours in your life, you’re not alone. Consider these statistics:
- The average married couple works 26 percent longer each year than similar working couples did thirty years ago.
- Leisure time among children ages 12 and under has declined from 40 percent of a child’s day in 1981 to 25 percent of a child’s day in 1997, and about one in four American adults reports no leisure-time physical activity.
- A landmark Surgeon General’s Report identified lack of physical activity, including during leisure, as a serious health threat in the U.S.
The late A. Bartlett Giamatti, former president of Yale University and one-time commissioner of Major League Baseball said, “You can learn more about a society by observing the way they play as opposed to how they work.”
Our high-tech life, with its accelerated pace, has fostered a culture that seems to be always working, always rushed, always connected. With cell phones interrupting the theater, laptop computers at the beach, internet connections at every other café, and home offices that beckon us all night and day, it’s hard to separate “play” from “work.” Yet to maintain balance in our lives and for our ultimate well-being, play is essential. Lenore Terr, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Beyond Love and Work: Why Adults Need to Play, argues that play is crucial at every stage of life. In play, we discover pleasure, cultivate feelings of accomplishment, and acquire a sense of belonging. When we play, we learn and mature and find an outlet for stress. “Play is a lost key,” Terr writes. “It unlocks the door to ourselves.”
When we are completely involved in play, our cares and worries disappear. Sailing, playing a game of tennis, or being thoroughly engrossed in a good novel, we feel pleasurably alive and light-hearted. Nothing like play allows us to be present in the moment.
To be clear, in case the thought of play makes you anxious. I’m not suggesting you be silly, act childish or play games (unless you want to).
Play, for our purposes, means doing something you enjoy without being concerned with the outcome. This is a bit different from playfulness, which is having a lighthearted attitude and not taking yourself too seriously. Hopefully, you can be playful while playing. But I encourage you to prioritize play itself.
How to Prioritize Play
If you feel like you don’t have enough playtime in your life (and who doesn’t), try these suggestions:
Turn-off. Turn off the television, computer, beeper, and cell phone for at least two hours daily.
Let your mind wander. Recall what you used to enjoy doing or what you always wanted to do before we became so technology-oriented.
Include others. Invite someone over to play, just like you used to when you were a kid. Nothing planned, nothing structured. Let your play evolve naturally. Invite your partner to play! Make a play date with them.
Think physical. Go for a walk, ride your bike, rent some skates, break out the corn hole set from the basement, go for a swim or a run.
Pretend. Pretend you don’t have any cares or worries. Pretend you have all the time in the world to laugh, play, and enjoy. Pretend there is no moment other than this.
If you’re still feeling skeptical, allow me to offer this quote from play expert Stuart Brown from his book Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. He’s talking about what play is and what life would be like without it, and he points out how many of the good things in life are, at their core, forms of play. As he writes:
“It’s not just an absence of games or sports. Life without play is a life without books, without movies, art, music, jokes, dramatic stories. Imagine a world with no flirting, no daydreaming, no comedy, no irony. It would be a pretty grim place to live. In a broad sense, play is what lifts people out of the mundane. I sometimes compare play to oxygen—it’s all around us, yet it goes mostly unnoticed or unappreciated until it is missing.”¹
For many of us, play is missing from our daily lives and from our relationships. And I believe that it’s our lack of play that keeps us stuck in the mundane, bored with each other and with our lives.
Reviving our relationships with play enlivens everyone and makes the world a better place.
If your relationship is feeling mundane, contact us to see how couples therapy can help you.
Author’s content used under license, © Claire Communications
