PLAY

I want to talk about play tonight.  I went to one of my quote files and found a couple of quotes about play.

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."
George Bernard Shaw

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Plato

I don't play enough, I never played enough.  As a child I was much to hypervigilant to really play.  I was watching and listening all the time.  I was afraid I was going to get caught.  I am not even sure what I was afraid I was going to get caught doing, something I shouldn't no doubt.  But I was never sure what I was allowed to do and what I wasn't, because the rules were so inconsistant, in fact there was no consistancy at all.  What was o.k. today might get you knocked across the room tomorrow.  Maybe my mother was never allowed to play either, I don't know.  I always thought that I was a little grownup, and I tried to be.

I was a mother at 16 years old and that may be the first time I learned to play.  I watched my baby.  He instinctively knew how to play.  At 3 months old he was smiling, so I knew what made him happy.  At 4 months old he was laughing and I would laugh with him.  That was probably the first time that I had laughed that way, even then the sound of my own laughter would sometimes startle me and I would look around, even though there was just the two of us, just to make sure no one seen me or heard me.  After a few years, when I had moved away from that home and that family I had more babies and I laughed and played more with them.  If I hadn't had children I may never have learned to play at all.  Then life became very serious again; work and school, then college seemed to take all of my time and energy.  About that time I discovered alcohol and recreational drugs.  While under the influence of these mind altering substances I sometimes laughed and perhaps I played.  Then I realized that I also cried a lot during that 10 year period.

I am glad that there is no age limit on playing, because I want to be able to learn to play again; or maybe for the first time.  I like the quotes that I found and I will expound more on them in the next few days or nights.  Right now I feel a little cold and tired.  I am going to my bed and read.  I think that through reading I find the little bit of play that I have in my life right now.

April 14th, 2011.............10:32p.m.