Just playing

We tend to be dismissive of play sometimes.
It’s the vital way that children learn to engage their senses and movements with the environment and discover new experiences.

We might view it as work for them, but I think it is full of surprises and creativity. They happen to learn along the way. Have adults learnt not to play?

Adults can rediscover play. The word itself gives me some clues. There is a sense of movement. The light ‘plays’ on the clouds. The wind ‘plays’ in the trees as they are buffeted to and fro. We step gingerly out onto the rope bridge stretching across the river, and we test the ‘play’ of it with one foot. It moves up and down. Is it stable enough and strong enough to take our weight?

Imagine for a moment the dog playing with a ball.

Our dog ‘asks’ for us to pick up the ball when she chooses to drop it, "Play with me" her eyes say - but she never brings the ball back.

She will sometimes throw it for us with a flick of her head.

Her game has taught us to fetch!

We use ‘play’ when we talk of ‘playing the flute’ or another musical instrument.

No doubt the sound-making started as an experiment, using the to and fro of the instrument to generate sounds. Now perhaps it has been refined into a practised skill, and playing has become a performance, which is altogether a different kind of creative act.

When it becomes overly competitive or compulsive, playing has lost much of its freedom. Being ‘good enough’ may have pushed away the sense of humour or serendipity.

I think the same may happen when actors perform a play for the umpteenth time. Unlike the uproarious laughter when there is a surprise change of plan and they are all improvising to and fro to patch it up, in a less than perfect way!

I’d like to think of true creativity as play, such a natural part of us.
As I experience the created world I am struck by the way something so supremely serious can at the same time be light-hearted.

Maybe we too can play a little more and we might even discover a divine sense of humour?

Can you see the bow-tie on my topiary bird?