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Come Out and Play

Eliz and DonBecome a kid again

There is a kid in all of us. Sometimes we tie him up so he can’t say, “I’m tired of working.  I want to go play.”

Every kid needs time to play. That is true for us as adults as well. There is a kid in each of us who wants to fling out his arms and race down the hill with wild abandon while laughing for the sheer joy of laughing.

Play for the health of it

Play is that medium that releases the bubble of life inside each of us, inviting us to get off the merry-go-round of schedules and simply be. It liberates us from the pressure of work, stress and time constraints to let go and have fun.

Play – it can be individual or a group effort. It can be the simple act of working on a project that has no merit other than it is fun and pleasing in some way. It may be a solitaire state of being as you sit and watch an ant hard at work gathering and collecting bits of food, or a spider deviously waiting on his web of deception for that unsuspecting insect to land and be captured.

Play is that moment when life stands still and you allow your whole being to taste, smell and enjoy the world around you – to experiment with movement or stillness or competition with others who are as eager to escape the confines and chains of have to’s and must’s.

In a world of rules and regulations, we need to find those times when we can abandon ourselves to the freedom of tom-foolery and silliness.

Children and Play

When parents know how to fool around and have fun, children feel less pressured with all the rules of life they are learning. It becomes a time when both child and adult can simply let go and enjoy the moment and each other.

Don - on top of the heap 001Play shouldn’t have to wait until everyone is tired and cranky, but can be a spontaneous way to release stress before going back to our routines and chores. Like love, it becomes a part of the fabric of our life.

It doesn’t matter how we engage in this spontaneous frivolity – whether we become absorbed in sports or table games or gentle roughhousing after which we may sit and talk. When we are free to be ourselves in any situation, we learn to laugh at ourselves and not at someone else.

Play, like humor and laughter, restores our equilibrium as we tease and fool around. We learn to take ourselves less seriously as we poke fun at our own mistakes and find humor in the humorless. It is an attitude – a time of escape from the rigors of life – that rejuvenates and heals.

Parents need that – kids need that – everybody needs that.  

Rules and Play

We need rules to create the structure to navigate the rivers and oceans of our lives. We need love to know we are accepted. We need play to establish a relationship of togetherness that releases our love for one another.

Marlene Anderson

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