I have been thinking about play lately, specifically about how easily it gets demoted to the garnish of life. Something you get to have after the bills are paid, the work is done, everyone has been taken care of, the world stops being on fire, and you have finally become the fully optimized human being your to-do list has been bullying you into becoming. So, never. But I am starting to think play belongs somewhere much closer to the foundation. Not because everything is fine or because seriousness has no place, but because creativity requires a mind that can wander beyond what is immediately necessary.
Survival focus is incredibly useful when there is something to survive. It narrows your attention toward what is missing, what needs fixing, and what needs to happen next. The problem is that you can become so practiced at scanning for the next problem that you keep doing it long after your circumstances require it. Responsibility becomes an identity. Seriousness becomes a lifestyle. Eventually, you can have space in your life and still experience that space as something that needs to be filled, improved, monetized, optimized, or made useful.
What happens when we treat whimsy with the same devotion we have given productivity? Not waiting for play to spontaneously appear once everything else is handled, but deciding that pleasure, curiosity, imagination, and doing shit for absolutely no productive reason deserve space in a life too.
I Dare You To... Waste Your Own Time
Grab your journal. For the next ten minutes, you are banned from being useful.
Make a list titled Things I Would Do If They Didn’t Have To Lead Anywhere.
The rules are simple. Nothing on the list needs to improve you, make money, become content, develop a skill, heal a wound, impress anybody, or become a new fucking morning routine. You are looking for things whose only justification is: that sounds fun.
Pick the idea that makes some neglected little part of you go, wait...can we actually do that? Then answer this: What does the thing I chose reveal about what I have been starving while I was busy being responsible? Tell me what you came up with in the comments.
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