Voices: Play Dates
Summer is traditionally thought of as an approved time to be lazy.
Take a summer job if you have to, but even better if you can kick back under the shade of a tree along a riverbank with no more ambition than to watch the waves roll by.
As a recovering workaholic, I've never had much use for laziness. I've come to accept that perfection is not the ideal, but I still swell with contempt at the thought of wasting time. I can't fathom why people would rather complain about a mess for longer than it takes to just clean it up and get rid of it. Because laziness is not a lack of energy. Being lazy isn't the same thing as being tired or being depressed or being bored - yet, it's somehow a combination of all three. Laziness is a lack of will. It's a lack of inspiration.
The comment used to be uttered so often in response to frolicking children it was cliché - "Boy, if you could bottle that energy, you'd make a fortune!"
These days children don't frolic. Well, they do until about age 9 or so when being cool becomes more important having fun. Not so coincidently, it's about the same time they start groaning when you ask them for a favor. When they start sleeping in on Saturday instead of waking you up at 7 a.m. When they start to see their younger siblings as embarrassments instead of playmates. When they stop going outside to play and start going out to "hang out."
You could blame technology for bringing on this premature discard of childhood joy. Or the shamefully small sums budgeted to school arts programs. Or the media's deification of pre-teen plastic pop idols. Blame corporations for brainwashing us into insatiable consumers if it makes you feel better. Because no matter who you pin the disease on, laziness is still just a symptom. Thankfully, the disease - let's call it "insufficient recreation syndrome" until someone comes up with a snazzier title - is completely manageable.
When all is said and done, laziness is the inevitable result of poor recreation habits. That's why it starts to display itself at the same time we stop playing. If you don't consciously replenish yourself with exciting and enriching experiences, you're eventually going to become discouraged and disillusioned.
An artist friend of mine recently lamented about what he considered a "gentrification of the art community."
"They feel like they have to act sophisticated instead of silly," he sadly observed.
When we start to devalue some experiences in pursuit of only hipper, trendier ones, we close our minds to a huge realm of unclassified experience. We stifle the instinct to explore the world around us and start asking questions like "Well, what is it?" "I don't get it?" and "Why should I?" We start looking over our shoulder to see if anyone's looking. We spend the evening "relaxing in front of the TV" and then wonder why it's so hard to get out of bed in the morning. Wait, why are we relaxing? You know where all those people who are always exercising all the time get all that energy? It's from exercising all the time! Their hearts still pound with adrenaline on a regular basis and they therefore feel invigorated.
But exercise alone is not play. Play demands that we unleash our inhibitions. It asks us to turn off our inner censor and bravely conceive of new and creative ways to interact with our environment. It insists that we sing loud even as we're still making up the words. In order to play we must succumb to silliness.
By all means lay back and work on your tan this summer, but this time, instead of just sticking your big toe in the water, think about how it would feel to spontaneously jump in and splash and scream like you used to do when you were eight years old. Before that older, cooler kid rolled his eyes, made fun of you for holding your nose and told you to grow up.
-- alicia grega-pikul, 2 june 2005
Send email to: apikul@timesshamrock.com.
