As adults, we work to assure we provide the essentials of survival for ourselves and those dependent upon us who cannot do so for themselves. We play as respite from our labors and to relieve the disorder and distress that accrue from our daily activities and efforts in our work.
Essentially we work so that we can keep on living.
Why is Play important for adults?
I suggest that
Play is a refuge from Outer Reality in which we free ourselves for a time to seek Pleasure and refresh Inner Reality
The “slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune”, in the words of Hamlet [Act III, Scene 1], impinge upon all of us in daily life. The order affected is that of our individual and unique inner reality.
Daily Life and Inner Reality [Harris, 2009a]
One of our first tasks begins at birth as a new person living and breathing, which is to recognize the boundary between the rest of the universe and our self. The first clues are that surprising breath of air and many new sensations of brighter light, louder sound, touches on our skin, and body movements we did not initiate.
We will pursue this task the rest of our lives, beginning with our childhood play, building our Inner Reality, orderly and distinct from Outer Reality.
Inner Reality
Inner Reality — the psyche, our personal worldview and body of knowledge, the operating system and data banks through which we process all that our senses perceive, assign meaning, and choose to take action — is built layer by layer throughout life.
It serves us well until we confront one too many —
unresolved contradictions
the strident call to take some action which does not seem congruent with all that we hold to be true
ill-considered application of The Rules which we consider hard and fast
possibly incontrovertible fact that is at odds with our basic underlying assumptions of “the way things are”
This is the stuff of daily life, and it results in growing disorder of our Inner Reality .
Adult daily life
Daily life in Outer Reality tends to increase disorder in Inner Reality and increase suffering and discomfort.
Imagine for a moment our orderly, competent selves, with the buffer zone between our Inner Reality and the Outer Reality orderly and at peace, standing ready for whatever life brings.
As we live and learn, our Inner Reality shifts with the changing information we perceive about the world, including our perceptions of ourselves and the meanings we append to the new information.
We —
accept or deny
validate or discard
decide
express
act
embrace or refute
assume
In doing this —
emotions
concerns
thoughts
relationships
knowledge
memory
unfulfilled needs
— all active, busy, and intertwined —
— complete with —
loose ends
untested assumptions
hot buttons
tangles
core hurts
deadlines
misguided intentions
human frailties of all kinds
plans and regrets
concerns for others
— accumulate and increase our internal discomfort and disorder.
Sooner or later, we need to take refuge to realign, clean up, and reorder our Inner Reality.
Child’s Play
As busy adults, it is easy to lose touch with the play of children. We are more likely to send the children out to play than to do so ourselves.
Rather than sifting through the morass to a common understanding, I offer a mind picture:
Consider children around the ages of 5 to 7, indulging in activities unstructured by their adult caregivers. The children are aware of some of the rules and conventions of interpersonal behavior and of acceptable conduct; they follow these to avoid adult interference in their play. They are becoming aware of how the world works (Outer Reality) but their imaginations are not constrained by that knowledge.
Children play. In their play, they create temporary bubbles of shared reality in which rules and facts of Outer Reality can be ignored or varied. Toy vehicles become real vehicles; dolls come to life; and a pointed finger becomes a gun.
Children explore Inner Reality and Outer Reality together, testing assumptions, trying new combinations, exploring and abandoning. Each finds and incorporates new information into inner reality by experimentation, observing the effects of play.
Play is an important part of the process of mental, spiritual, and physical development.
Adults often consider play to be frivolous and non-serious, something to be done only when there is nothing more important to do.
One hallmark of growing maturity is the extent to which children learn to maintain boundaries between their Inner Reality and the observable Outer Reality of adults. They become constrained to the “possible” and to the “acceptable”.
For adults, fully acclimated and adapted to Outer Reality, play is as rule-bound, structured, and constrained as the rest of life.
Safe, sane, and consensual
Perhaps Outer Reality would be much less stressful if we could bring these attitudes with us when we return to Real Life.
RedBird at Belle’s End