photo by Jill E. Williams
This is going to sound ironic, but I am going to go ahead and say it. I want you to do one thing today. Schedule play.
Schedule play? You say. Um, shouldn’t play be spontanous.
Well, yes, it would be fabulous if it was but rarely is it spontaneous, even rarer does does it ever happen, and it’s so darn good for us.
In July, a group of friends and I skipped school (well, work and mothering, but I never once skipped school for realz so I wanted to say skip school) to go stand up paddle boarding. And, you know what, it was so much fun. I had a long to do list at the time but over the course of paddling around that river, I just didn’t think about it. I delighted in my friends, in the sun, in the water, in a new sport, in just feeling life, feeling real, unhurried, uninhibited, undeterred. And it was good. Really good.
There hasn’t been much play in my life since then. And, recently, a friend who went paddling, too, sent me this article about play so I’ve been thinking about it again. Thinking about how hard it is to just let things go and have fun when you are all grown up with kids and wars and economies and bedtimes and, well, life to worry about. But life isn’t supposed to be ALL serious. And I am not at my best when I am on the hamster wheel of hyper-productivity. So, play, it is on my mind because I need to be doing it. To that end, I’ve booked another day of stand up paddling for mid-September.
What’s your play plan?
As chance would have it, on my way back from lunch today I was thinking about how important play is. I was remembering a scene from Gary Paulson’s book, Winter Dance, wherein he chronicles his adventures (and misadventures!) training for and running the Iditarod. In this memorable scene, he writes of watching several bison playing on ice. A bison would run up to the edge of the ice, then kind of belly-flop and slide out, stand up, bellow . . . and then another bison would follow suit. The object was very obviously to see who could slide the farthest. Similarly, one summer evening, I watched a herd of deer play tag. I could scarcely believe my eyes but I’ve played tag often enough to know what it looks like and these deer were playing tag!! So play was on my mind . . . and then I came back and found this blog post in my in-box. Think the Universe might be trying to tell me something!! Thanks, Rosie!! 🙂
So want to try stand up paddling!