Play
A while back I stumbled upon what I thought was a great perspective on play from Johnathan Collins’ blog here. I case you don’t know who Johnathan Collins is, he’s the co-founder of Bible Project.
In the essay he makes the point that as children we play like it’s our job (and it is). However, when we grow up we lose that.
When we get older, a lot of our work stops being “play.” Adult tasks require us to hunker down and focus. No goofing around. No using your imagination. No trying new things. No expelling unnecessary energy. Just get the job done. But more and more that kind of work is taken away from humans and given to machines because machines are better at it than us.
So he gives some advice:
Don’t try to outperform machines.
You are Human. Do what humans do best. Play. Take risks. Use your imagination. Spin in circles just to see how it feels. Play like it is your job.
“Play like it is your job” almost sounds irresponsible as an adult because we’ve forgotten what it means to play.
I won’t repeat his bullet points of what it means to “play” here, so please go read them on his blog.