The Power of Play
Recently, on a cold February day, we met up with some friends and their children on a beach. We ran amok, played tag, whooped, built a huge communal sandcastle and returned home cold, damp, sandy and happier than we’d been for quite a while.
We’d given in to play and we felt much better for it. Our society tends to dismiss play for adults. At worst it’s seen as an unproductive, guilty pleasure. Adults are supposed to be serious and let’s face it, between work and ferrying children around to various activities there’s little time for play. When we do play, it often tends to be competitive (tennis, squash, golf).
But research suggests that playing is just as important for adults as for children. It makes us happy, helps with problem-solving, improves our creativity and strengthens our relationships.
The author and psychiatrist Stuart Brown, has spent decades studying the power of play in prisoners, business people, artists and Nobel Prize winners among others. He’s reviewed over 6,000 “play histories,” case studies that explore the role of play in each person’s childhood and adulthood.
He found that lack of play was as important as other factors in predicting criminal behaviour among murderers in Texas prisons. He also found that playing together helped couples connect on an emotional level, and that play could even help strangers to bond and also act as a healing tool.
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But what is play? How do we define it? Brown calls play a “state of being,” “purposeless, fun and pleasurable.” For the most part, the focus is on the actual experience, not on accomplishing a goal.
And play means different things to different people. My friend Rita knits and crochets for pleasure, I write, walk my dog and take photographs, my husband water-skis, and our neighbour restores old mopeds.
You can benefit from play even if you don’t have much spare time. The research suggests we only need a little bit of daily play to boost our productivity and happiness.
If you don’t think you know how to play, write your own ‘play history’ down on paper. What did you do as a child that excited you? Did you engage in those activities alone or with others? Did you play with trains? Did you draw? Did you build dens? How might you recreate that today?
Surround yourself with playful people. We wouldn’t have had such fun on the beach that day if our friends had been po-faced and serious. The fact that we were all up for running around and playing was important. The best playful people are children. Spend time with them and experience the magic of play through their eyes.
Finally, any time you think play is a waste of time; remind yourself that it offers some serious benefits for both you and those around you.
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