If all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy then we need to have a conversation about playing. This is the theme of the movie “Christopher Robin”: the curse of adulthood is that you forget how to play, and therefore, how to live.
That theme has permeated literature, but we keep repeating the cycle. Wondrous kids grow up to be boring adults who forget how to play, replacing the joy of life with the grind.
It’s as if the responsibilities of life crush the whimsical kid inside of us and we relegate ourselves to living inside a box, trapped by the burden of income and provision.
Even when it doesn’t cost us anything, we often forget how to play—especially if we don’t have kids or after they’ve grown.
Instead of playing, we adults learn to take “time off”, but that time off is never really enough and as soon as you get back to work you’re counting down to the next one.
So there are two realities for adults: work and time off. Vacation and vocation.
Let’s dig a little deeper to try to find where play fits.
The word “vacation” comes from the Old French vacacion meaning vacancy. The idea is there is a vacancy of responsibility. The goal of vacation is to free your mind and engage the child in you to take risks and chances you normally wouldn’t, to wallow in the freedom. Play fits here.
The word “vocation” is very similar. It comes from the Old French vocacion meaning call, consecration; calling, profession. It’s a work you do because you think it is your mission in life. Play fits here too.
“Play” can be as simple as quieting the internal editor and pushing forward with a crazy idea. “Play” is finding out you still love to build forts in the woods and instead of camping in a tent you pick up a tarp and some leaves and go knock yourself out one night.
“Play” is the creative world that opens up to us when we choose to be optimistic and take risks.
Without play, every area of our life becomes dull.
How much would your business and clients benefit from a more creative, optimistic, whimsical you?
This is why I believe the following to be true:
Vocation without play is dull.
Vacation without play is, again, dull.
In the final analysis I do think that serious adult-types have have lost the courage and insight of child-like play, and I think we’ve replaced that missing element with a simple ying-yang approach to work and vacation.
But that is no replacement. That is a downgrade, a big one.
There is a healthy proportion between work and rest, but if we lose the sense of play, we will lose our very humanity in the meantime.
If our life’s work is at stake, I think we should take the advice of Mary Poppins and go fly a kite, up to the highest height.
“It will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages, while excited men of time rush about confusing motion with progress. But it will pay in the long run...” ~A. W. Tozer