Most of us think of adult play as respite or indulgence, but having fun is no trivial pursuit. In fact, it's crucial to put mental creativity, health and happiness.
Say the words and they conjure the gentle tickle of waves against the shore, the harder kick of surf dashing against rocks, the slap of spray against heated skin. For most of us, the place where earth meets ocean is the very essence of play—antic, full of novelty and joyful abandon.
At the beach, we are all children. As we gambol in the shallow surf and toss in the deeper waves, we feel the freedom of helplessness and the satisfaction of improvising defenses. Unburdened by consciousness or self-consciousness, we are caught in the moment. Suffused with pleasure, we exult in the sheer lightness of being.
Yet, as welcome and wonderful as those feelings are, play's value among adults is too often vastly underrated. We would all agree that play lifts stress from us. It refreshes us and recharges us. It restores our optimism. It changes our perspective, stimulating creativity. It renews our ability to accomplish the work of the world. By anyone's reckoning, those are remarkably worthy achievements.
But there is also evidence that play does much more. It may in fact be the highest expression of our humanity, both imitating and advancing the evolutionary process. Play appears to allow our brains to exercise their very flexibility, to maintain and even perhaps renew the neural connections that embody our human potential to adapt, to meet any possible set of environmental conditions.
And it may be that playfulness is a force woven through our search for mates. Certainly, playful people are the most fun to be around. But the ability to play may be a strong and appealing signal of something more. Especially among males, playfulness can protect us. It may be a way to indicate to potential partners that a man is not a threat to himself, to his offspring—or to society at large.
It can truly be said that we are made for play; after all, humans are among the very few animals that play as adults. What the evidence adds up to is this: we are most human when we play—and just because we play.
Like art, play is that quintessential experience that is almost impossible to define—because it encompasses infinite variability—but which we all recognize when we see, or experience. So let us go back to the beach in an attempt to understand all that contributes to such a necessary, and exalted, psychological state.
The beach is, above all else, Somewhere Else, far enough away from home, office, and everyday routines in character and distance. That dislocation sets the stage for us to be attuned to the moment, to relax our focus on long-term goals.
Being at the beach invariably forces a measure of spontaneity. We bring few of our usual possessions and tools. We are forced to recline, stretch out, relax.
If the sand and the water offer their own endless cache of novelty, the sun draws our attention to them. And it cossets us, taking tension out of our bodies with its warmth. Then, too, there is the novelty of (relative) nudity. It renders us all childlike and opens us to the enjoyment of sensations. It renders us ready to play.
Despite our readiness to play, at the beach and other places, we Americans have a particularly deep ambivalence toward play. According to Cindy S. Aron, Ph.D., associate professor of history at the University of Virginia, Americans want to get out and play, and we do. But we have also created many ways that keep us connected to work. Partial evidence: the ubiquity of cell phones and laptop computers at the beach.
The concept of vacation—time specifically set aside from work for play—grew from the custom of a small elite in the early 19th century, observes Aron in Working at Play (Oxford, 1999). Fostered by the growth of the middle class, the creation of a highway system and the changeover from an agricultural to urban society, it expanded to a mass phenomenon by World War II.
But at the same time, notes Aron, "Americans have struggled with the notion of taking time off." In fact, she says, we have "a love/hate battle" with our vacations, both wanting to take them and fearing the consequences. Our distrust of leisure is a legacy of our Puritan forebears, who knew that work, not play, was the key to their success and saw labor as a way of glorifying God. Play, according to this view, threatens to undermine both our success and salvation.
Freud, too, disregarded play as a powerful force. In his 1930 classic Civilization and Its Discontents, he declared that "the communal life of human beings had, therefore, a twofold foundation: the compulsion to work... and the power of love."
As a result, today we often use our leisure time not necessarily to play, but in performance of various sorts of work, whether it's time at the health spa or artists' retreats.
It isn't even clear whether we are playing more or less than we used to. If we're playing more, it doesn't feel like it. Just in the past 30 years, there has been a cultural shift reemphasizing work and getting ahead. "We still play, but much of it seems to lack a playful quality," observes anthropologist Garry Chick, Ph.D., of Penn State University. "Playfulness has been replaced by aggressiveness and the feeling that more needs to be crammed into less time."
Tags:
abandon,
brains,
environmental conditions,
fun,
having fun,
health and happiness,
helplessness,
human potential,
indulgence,
leisure,
mates,
mental health,
neural connections,
offspring,
play,
playfulness,
potential partners,
self consciousness,
slap,
vacation
