In this month’s newsletter, I’m following up on the article from last month (here) that discussed the importance of play in dark personal and political times. But how one is to play I left to address in this article, so below you’ll find my thoughts about the hows and whys of play, as well as a grab-bag of ideas for very particular instances of play. I don’t mean any of them as prescriptive, or claim they’ll be to your taste; instead, they are presented to give an overall flavor of the experiential and behavioral modes of play across just a handful of possible life domains. When one starts grokking (or often for adults, remembering) the heft and feel of play, one’s mind tends to respond with an outpouring of ideas. When we feel safe and oriented, we play.

So, I hope this article gives weight to the theory of the previous newsletter, and that you come away with a little bit more encouragement to play as a general rule, and particularly at dark times, and some ideas that point to how that play mode feels and flows.

The Pragmatics of Play: How to Play in Dark Times

Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.        ~ (Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark, 2015)

If we accept, as I wrote in the last newsletter article (here), that play is especially necessary in dark times—whether political or personal—then the next question is, how do we actually practice play? Particularly as adults and activists, it quite likely is not self-evident anymore, or at least we may need a refresher. This is normal, both because in young adulthood we start “putting away childish things” like play, and because of the simple fact that fear kills play. In terms of our parts (click here for a primer on IFS), the Child, whose core nature is play, typically gets suppressed or “exiled” when the pressures of young adulthood hit, such that a focus on play is often necessary to jog the memory. So, here are some thoughts about both the general and the particulars of deploying play in our day-to-day lives.

What is play for?

I’ll pull in the quote from Gray (2013) from the last article to give us a starting definition:

[First,] play [is] self-chosen and self-directed. Players choose freely whether or not to play, make and change the rules as they go along, and are always free to quit. Second, play is intrinsically motivated; that is, it is done for its own sake…Third, play is guided by mental rules (which provide structure to the activity), but the rules always leave room for creativity. Fourth, play is imaginative; that is, it is seen by the players as in some sense not real, separate from the serious world. And last, play is conducted in an alert, active, but relatively unstressed frame of mind. (p. 274)

So, in a sense, in order for play to be play, it has to be for nothing other than itself. If I engage a game of poker because of a love of the experience itself, then that is play. Whereas if I “play” it in order to pump up my ego or make rent money, then the game is subaltern to its worldly function. The outcome of the game is more important than the experience, and therefore it will feel, and be, more like work or survival. There’s nothing wrong with that necessarily, it just will not convey the benefits of play.

What are the benefits of play?

Play, in all its forms, has a number of common rewards, especially in relation to oppressive psychological and political times (here’s an accessible summary of the science of play). Boiled down, these rewards encompass:

• Psychological flexibility: Play helps the psyche (and a group’s psyche) remain or regain flexibility and resilience. It is a mode of engaging reality which (if it actually is play) is curious, open, exploratory, present-centered, and experimental. All of these require and reinforce a flexible state of mind, compared to being outcome-focused, a mode that limits our range of attention, sometimes, when scared, to a narrowed pin-point.
• Increases aliveness: Play energizes and enlivens. When we are acting from intrinsic motivations, we are rewarded with these engagements that are more directly relevant to our selves, instead of being “self-distant” as with survival tasks. This comes with a sense of vitality and potential. Play also challenges us in different ways, but in a manageable, constrained what that offers the possibility of accomplishment, and therefore self-esteem and energy.
• Social connection and cohesion: We often play games as a social activity, in which competition and winning are secondary or even irrelevant. This leads to a kind of synchronization amongst individuals that (barring trauma) our nervous systems generally relish. We are profoundly social and social networking creatures, and play is intrinsically social. Even if we are playing at a paint canvas, our self is engaging with other elements (reverie, spontaneous images, the unconscious layer of mind, our bodies) of realities that are not strictly “me”. This is social and relational, and it’s a deep aspect of what makes play alive.
• Protects a sense of possibility and freedom: As described in the last newsletter, play connects us with our sense of ourselves, because it is, by definition, intrinsically motivated. This means that when we are genuinely playing, the rewards come from that self-connection rather than from compliance or adaptation to something outside of ourselves (depressive interior protectors and external authoritarians). We realize that our aliveness belongs to us, not to some outside power. We also understand how life does not have to always be ruled by instrumentality and outcome: as useful as that mode is, play allows us to integrate the mode of “life for life’s sake.”
• Supports experimentation and change: Because play, especially in the form of games, creates contexts in which rules create a protected space to experiment, within which challenge is modulated (game studies call this the “magic circle”), then we are freer to practice skills and behaviors that otherwise would be too costly or threatening to challenge. We get to rehearse behaviors that might get us ostracized or hurt in other contexts (the difference between a mock UN and a courtroom, or between boxing and street fighting); we are protected to experiment and then bring those results out into the wilder world.

How to orient to a more playful life?

Here are some suggestions and questions pointing to the contours of a play-rich, and playfully rebellious, life.

• Don’t force play: Instead, think of what contexts would make play feel safer and more organic.
• Play is not distraction and is not only the purview of childhood: In fact, the integration of play into adult life represents a huge advancement from the insecurity of young adulthood.
• Play does not have to be large: It is much more important to be able to access small, even micro, amounts of play routinely throughout the different domains of our life. Our whole life need not be in the play mode; if that’s even possible, it’s likely not desirable. But think about the small, protected spaces where you thought play was not possible, and experiment there.
• Play does not have to be always joyful: Sometimes the benefit of play is that it inches us away from the darkness and makes a hole in that dark to let a little pinprick of light through.
• Experiment, experiment, experiment!: …not to gather data, but rather to ask the question, “What would I experience if I did X?”, and then run the experiment to see. Not “what should I be?”, but, “what if I try…?” (In certain areas of role-playing games, the adage is “Play to find out.”)
• Ask, “What has become rigid in my life?”: …and how can I break up that rigidity without overwhelming myself?
• Ask, “What relationships actually have more room for play?”: Look around at your relationships and see where we are taking others for granted, or boxing them up in the tactical or instrumental, and then how we can enliven them through play. Not everyone can or is willing to play, at all or with us. That is fine, accept that limitation and know, and then prove, that there is a world of people who also want to play.
• Ask, “How has my view of the world become grey, fearful, and angry?”,: and then think about how you can challenge this rigid view. Challenge yourself to see and engage the goodness and aliveness of otherwise dark times.

I probably missed something: Add your better, creative, startling, rambunctious, rebellious, tender idea here.

Particular ideas for play

So, hopefully that all convinces you that life needs to be, and even wants to be, playful. I’ll assume it does, and then address specifically what play (or more play) looks like both in the day-to-day of life and in the context of “dark times”. I’ll break these ideas up by categories, but in the spirit of this article, feel free to do whatever feels playful with them: add, subtract, modify, daydream on them as prompts, immediately experiment with them, explore why they stir up fears (but with playful curiosity), or print them out and make origami. Up to you. But try to feel the energy and intent of these different ideas as you read through them, and especially try to feel the mode of engagement they point to.

Play in politics:

• For a march/rally: wear a costume; bring a bubble machine; pass out musical instruments; play those instruments silently; play invisible instruments loudly; pass out candy randomly; dance frequently; do street theater (improv or planned); and so forth.
• For an activist meeting: start with group dancing, or more aggressively, puns; build into the structure time to play thumb wrestling; have members write dreams, crumple them up, throw them around and periodically read them aloud; make space for grief rituals that look like joy; and so forth.
• For a public political meeting: say something loving to the officials; comment on our shared humanity; twinkle and smile as you present your case; leave notes that say, “It’s really going to be OK,” under the seat; and so forth.

Play in society:

• Day to day: Smile at strangers; compliment the pizza guy; leave doodles in random places; leave love notes to humanity in random places; put up stickers of cartoon flowers and/or happy faces; invite the airport terminal to play a game with you; “beam” (direct positive energy) towards a stranger and see if they will feel it; wear colors that feel manageably edgy; create a song about the commute; make up fantasy or sci-fi stories about others at the DMV; wave at a dog before greeting their human; greet pigeons with, “Hey buddies”; distribute googly eyes; comment to a stranger on the pain and joy of being human; give a friend a piggyback ride in the ice-cream shop; and so forth.
• At work: Start a random gift exchange program; give away free plants; be curious about the dreams of coworkers; imagine the spirit animals of the board members; drive a different route to work; put stickers on your screen for the Zoom meeting; routinely hide rubber frogs in the plants; and so forth.

Play in relationships:

• Solo: Keep a journal to reflect on your day, but from the perspective of your dog; make a chart of colors and each week buy those color flowers; play a solo role-playing game; play a video game as if in Mystery Science Theater 3000 (look it up); walk home randomly; explore a different neighborhood that you always pass by; write badly on purpose; write goodly but enjoy the badness; think about death when in love, while dancing; channel the dialogues of the plants while gardening; invent a personal holiday and never tell anyone else; paint the ugly chair so it’s uglier; and so forth.
• Singular friends/partners: Express your love as soon as your feel it; invite them into spontaneous pun fests; create a game that only you and they understand; create a whole game just for them; do spontaneous street theater; do spontaneous street theater that invites others to play; do random skipping; thumb wrestle at the checkout line; throw dice to decide the route home; play hide-and-seek in the bus terminal; pick a beautiful natural location to discuss death; make a film together; have a conversation between your bicycles; require specific arguments be had in animal voices; and so forth.
• Groups: play role-playing or board games and dance when it gets too serious; create a text chain of only deliberately bad advice; create an email list of only groundedly uplifting data about the world; make a round-robin event where you bring food inspired by different geographies; periodically issue artistic challenges to the group; do the hokey-pokey on the street with the group; mourn together while dancing; and so forth.

Play with aesthetics and language:

• Aesthetics: Rearrange the plants in the house; put up fairy lights; get a lightbulb that can change colors or strobe; commune for an hour with one painting at the museum; make an altar to absurdity; tie ribbons on your tree; paint like you’re giving a gift to your favorite all-loving goddess; wear a cloak; ask AI for random music genres and then listen; draw fear but like you would if giving a beautiful gift to a child; and so forth.
• Language: Make up puns; alter famous poems; speak only in metaphors for five minutes; alter famous Shakspearian soliloquies by replacing every fifth word with a random noun; make the name of your most common suffering into a nursery rhyme title; do accents badly, on purpose; repeat a phrase and taste the beauty of the language; rhapsodize on the miracle of language itself; and so forth.

Play with storytelling:

• Stories: tell your typical origin story from the perspectives of minor characters; write about your day as if a religious text; rewrite a movie; let a story move through you onto the page; close your eyes and relish the story your subconscious is telling; read a book from an unknown genre; imagine a political speech is being ghost-written by an alien; write a story or anecdote that a child would love; and so forth.

Micro-Play:

• Tiny play: mold your mashed potatoes with your eyes closed; turn left and not right; enter the store you’ve always ignored; sit in a different desk in class; buy a random cereal; listen to a familiar song but only dance with one limb; eat at a neglected restaurant; draw shapes on the shower door fog; stare into a graveyard; take your walk only focusing on color; tell a wild animal you love it, but mean it; and so forth.

Conclusion

So, there’s a bevy of ideas about very tangible ways to play, and hopefully you can see how play does not seem to have any artificial boundaries to it. It is a mode, a way of engaging whatever domain or detail might be in front of us, and most importantly, our own psyches. It is, in a sense, aliveness for aliveness’ sake, which makes it profoundly undermining to both depression and authoritarianism. Not because it is strategic—the goal of play is not revolution per se—but because it lets us source aliveness and vitality from the core of our selves and reality. And if you don’t believe reality is playful, spend some time just looking, examining closely the interactions of matter, animals, of the senses, and of people. They are never behaving according to some strict plan, certainly never to our exact expectations. There is always novelty presented and arising, but to see it we have to get out of our programmed and entrenched modes.

Yet, while this is all true, a playful reality is a meaningless (or worse) truth unless we experience it. In terms of dark times, depression does not remit until we experience a credible and stable goodness to reality, and all the wisdom or manuals on play do nothing if we cannot or will not experience the essential worthiness of life and ourselves. The same with authoritarians, who do not crumble unless we extract our minds and hearts from their assertions that that worth is naturally and rightfully only sourced from King and Crown.

I hope this article has at least described one thing that’s grabbed you and sparked up a real sense of a greater potential for play in your life and this rough and dark time.