The Wisdom of Play

I believe we would all benefit greatly from injecting a spirit of play into our daily endeavours, which is to say, from not taking ourselves, and our lives, quite so seriously.

For example, remember when you were a kid, the way it felt to sit down and use your crayons or watercolour paints? 

As I recall there was no real objective than to sit and have a good time playing with line, colour, shape and the expression of whatever energy I was in possession of at the time. 

Are we not learning from and being educated by these activities? What about climbing trees? Catching frogs? Cherry fights in the orchard?

I think as adults we mistakenly equate leaving this rather more weightless approach behind with what it means to mature. 

Living a life freighted with work (much of which is optional ‘busy work’) is considered laudable and the more the better, for this is by extension equated with the notion that we/our lives, are consequential and important in direct proportion to the number of these encumbrances. Seriously?!

True maturity is marked by the ability to take personal responsibility for shaping one’s life in ways that edify and augment wellbeing (including, especially, the ability to love—to form and sustain intimate relationships). 

Over burdening ourselves, whatever the rationale, is something we need to be deeply skeptical about. Self-respect practically demands it.

Approaching one’s life more in the spirit of play necessitates taking inventory of our values. Is love a value? Happiness? Joy? Equanimity? Passion? Pleasure? Contentment? 

None of these thrive in the oppressive environment of an overburdened life.

We will always need to take on responsibility for feeding, clothing and sheltering ourselves, but there remains the freedom of choosing from a tremendous variety of options when it comes to getting this job done. It exists as a creative opportunity.

 We get to design our life, which has every possibility of being a joyful, interesting and edifying experience. The rest is optional.

Think about it …

Then go outside and play! 

The Passionate Life - Taking the Red Pill

Since the release of The Matrix in 1999, the “red pill” has become something of an iconic pop culture symbol. The taking of the red pill, arguably, represents the choice to live and die authentically, which is to say, living and dying not in the contrived world of one’s delusions and escapist fantasies, but in the actual world that constitutes one’s reality.  

Taking the red pill is not for the lame-minded or feeble of heart (there are work-outs to move in the direction of remedying this—journaling, meditation etc.).  The relinquishing of one’s contrived reality is, ultimately, the relinquishing of illusions that have often served to anesthetize us to our pain and suffering, as well as numbing us significantly to what passion and joy there may be in our lives, though I don’t think we usually appreciate the degree to which the latter is true.

Secondary gains (likely taking the form of perceived safety or security) are often the culprits that motivate us to sacrifice our vitality in this manner. I also believe that we get so used to a marginal, mediocre, compromised existence, that we really don’t see the extent to which our lives have deteriorated to something relatively lifeless and tasteless. 

The choice then is between living our lives finding new ways to tolerate a barely adequate existence, or daring to opt for the meaningful creation of one resonant with colour, sound and all manner of vibrancy. Is there really a choice here?

Living and dying with authenticity, as I see it, means choosing to get in touch with the deep contents of our inner world—the rabbit hole of one’s heart, mind, spirit and soul. It means being real about what we are actually feeling, what we know intellectually and intuitively, and choosing to treat this rich material like it is more worthy of our respect and serious consideration than the social and cultural structures that frame our lives outwardly. Fact is this is how they are re-shaped. The quality of all our lives hangs in the balance. 

As we live, so we die—two sides of the same coin.

All our lives have a beginning and an end—life itself is a continuous loop of beginnings and endings. Question is how do we want to orchestrate the bit in the middle?

Let's move into the New Year dedicated to living more authentically and passionately--take the red pill! ;)

Girl On Fire

This is the title of Alicia Keys’ latest album, which, if you are hunting for Christmas presents, would be a great pick. This CD rocks! It is musically and artistically diverse, and well executed. It sends a few good messages out into the world (the importance of love, women’s empowerment, personal integrity) and delivers the goods with passion and style. What can I say? I love this album.

The title in and of itself is inspiring and motivational. Are we going to spend our lives drifting like hungry ghosts or are we going to find our god given passions and move in the direction of fulfillment? Are we going to settle for what is a known quantity and, therefore, ostensibly safe and secure, or are we going to take an educated risk and explore new territory? Settling for the known is just way too easy. It requires almost nothing of us.

Growth, particularly in terms of depth, requires us to step outside our comfort zone. It demands pushing our edges a little. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!

Having said that, I do think it is important not to be reckless. Discovering what makes our juices flow necessitates a little thoughtful research. Figuring out what our priorities are, deciding where and on what we want to spend our energy takes a little time usually.

Exposure to new people, books, music, film etc., all hold the potential for enlightening us, for gaining knowledge about what is inspiring versus what is breathlessly banal.

This trip is one where the dictates of the heart need to be taken seriously. The mind has its role to play in sorting through all the material that comes up, but has the unfortunate tendency to believe its own way of knowing things superior. The heart knows things that are important, credible and relevant too. Ideally there is a sort of dialogue between the two.

I believe it is Einstein who is often credited as having pointed out that if we want our lives to be different, we can’t achieve that end without doing things differently. 

If a life on fire is the direction we want to head in then we need to discover the source of our passion and vitality.

I want to wish you all a very happy holiday season. Be well, enjoy the people close to you and dare to rock like a girl on fire!

The Messy, Uncertain, Beautiful Business of Life

Life is ever a messy, beautiful, uncertain, challenging business that requires constant awareness and adaptation. There is no such thing as perfection in the conventional sense, so I think it is probably wise to question the intelligence of finally getting it ‘right.’

The whole construct, the nature of life itself, is not set up for getting it right. We could, after all, have a long discussion about just what ‘right’ amounts to in the context of chaos and uncertainty. 

Perfectionism is a pernicious evil, in my opinion that distorts this basic truth and substantially robs us of the joy of living.

It seems to me that excellence and success need to be measured in ways that take into account life’s inherent imperfection. I believe we need to come to see the value, the beauty even, in imperfection if we want to live lives that foster psychological warmth, freedom and creativity. For these are often the first casualties in the war perfection wages on our psyches.

I’m more motivated and inspired by the idea of moving through life using whatever we’ve been given as a palette for creating rich, diverse, interesting and satisfying experiences in our life. We can nurture ourselves by playing with the stuff of our life, having fun with it, while also treating it with the care and respect that it deserves.

In turning this page in my life I am renewing my commitment to a world of creative freedom, a more light-hearted attitude and a deeper acceptance of who I am and what I’ve been given—in essence, to cultivate contentment and take greater pleasure in life. In this place there is mental and emotional freedom, there is nourishment, there is love.

There is no getting life ‘right’ I don’t think. But there is making the most of what we’ve been given, and the ability to cultivate interesting, fulfilling experiences that utilize the chaos as well as the order. I see this as an act of love and a worthy contribution to a society plagued by the ills of perfectionism.

Life will ever be a messy, beautiful, uncertain and challenging business—there’s no getting away from this. 

Question is how will we proceed from here? Within this context what do we want to create? How do we want to shape our lives? How do we want to feel?

The possibilities are infinite…