You Need to Play More

Prudent people always try not to speak about what someone else should do or needs or ought to do, but I’m setting prudence aside to tell you: Dear Friend, You Need to Play More. Living a life of well-being in which you feel fully and happily engaged means Finding Flow and exploring the experiences that transport you—finding the activities that engage you so completely that space and time fall away and you’re completely captivated.
Your BEST life needs to have a healthy balance of work and play, including time spent finding as many ways as possible to meld the two. Consider the man the Chinese poet Lu Yu describes in the poem “Written in a Carefree Mood”:

Old man pushing seventy.

In truth he acts like a little boy,

Whooping with delight when he spies some mountain fruits,

Laughing with joy, tagging after village mummers;

With the others having fun stacking tiles to make a pagoda,

Standing alone staring at his image in the jardinière pool.

Tucked under his arm, a battered book to read,

Just like the time he first set out to school.

The man “approaching seventy” is the adult in flow who nurtures the childlike spirit in his mind and body, staying present with the sensations of sight, sound, touch and taste that delight and sustain him. Nothing pleases me more than to count on being able to cultivate a childlike joy of life and love until I’m 100 and more.

Tap into what you enjoyed as a child to re-discover how and what you love. I grew up loving to dance and sing in the wild winds that usher in a thunderstorm. Often, in springtime in the Deep South, mild temperatures on unseasonably warm days clash with cooler weather, and we have a thunderstorm like none other. In the hour or so before the rain, brilliant lightning scrawls across the sky, thunder claps and rolls, and the wind grows stronger as inky-black clouds gather, the wind whipping the tree branches frantically this way and that. As a child, I was completely transported in the midst of this fire and fury, barefoot in the cool grass, twirling round and round with my arms flung out like a skinny little windmill, spinning and singing as my whole body and spirit felt “borne aloft,” as Keats says. I was a whirling dervish of pure joy, deeply connected to my earth ancestry and lighted attached to the power and the glory.

When I want to reach within and call up my inner child and her free and marvelous spirit, I close my eyes and imagine twirling and singing outside before a spring storm, and I’m reminded and gratified that I can conjure up the soulful part of me who is still a carefree, happy girl. She is the girl who helps me continue to find flow, and I adore her.

Reach back to the power and glory of your playful years—to the lighthearted spirit of your childhood self—and become aware of the warmth in your heart and the lingering smile on your face and the golden aura that surrounds your blessed and beautiful soul. In these ways, we live forever.

Starting Now,

Dr Mell

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Yu, Lu. “Written in a Carefree Mood.” Poems on aging. The Academy of American Poets. Poets.Org