Play

There was a moment at lunch with my sister today when I felt good.  It was when she laughed like she used to laugh when we were kids.  For a moment there, she wasn’t a manager, wasn’t a smart woman, wasn’t defended, she was just my sister.

I know how this blog reads.  It is a litany of pain and woe, of a smart person who can’t get beyond the hurt and is spiralling in.

And I also know what is missing, the healing bit that escape me.  I have hinted at it before when I talked about Colleen asking me if I grew up playing alone.  I did.

And that’s what I am missing still.  The playing.  I am missing the creation of a shared bubble of imagination where anything can happen, where possibility is rampant.  That’s what I am missing, that’s what keeps me small and down.  Play is breath to creative people, that moment of freedom where dreams can come to the surface and be visible, that moment of freedom where where imagination can create the possibility of moving beyond the expected and banal.

If we can’t play, we can’t breathe, and if we can’t breathe, life holds no flavor, no air to inflate our lungs, no air to lift our wings, no air to feed the magic of joyous transformation.   Play is an escape and an experience, a laugh and a lesson, a raucous rehersal for what we may do when needed.

Who do you play with?  How do your affirm, expand and extend them through play?  How do they amuse, challenge and encourage you through play?  How do you all move beyond borders to the space between through play?  How do the laughter and the lessons come together to move you steps ahead?

This is the secret need I have, people to play with, to assure me it’s allright and safe to test my limits, to push back frontiers, to try new things, fall on my face and try again.   Once I am beyond playfulness, I am beyond newness, beyond change & transformation, and that is beyond life.

I drastically need more playfulness in my life.  I need to breathe again.