Play and Freedom

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I’m not sure how to approach it. You see, I think this is a sensitive topic. Before any of us can be fully free we have to face what keeps us bound. What keeps us bound is sometimes our own doing. Most of the time, in my experience, people are reluctant to face their own culpability. Maybe this is only true of me, but I don’t think so. In any case, I don’t like knowing I am responsible for the bondage that seems to prevail everywhere, especially, and most poignantly, amongst we older folks. I’m referring to ageism, the form of prejudice we haven’t tackled as a free society, because we are so attached to it.

I want to write about freedom and play, but I know I can’t really get there, can’t feel that such a discussion will really touch reality, unless I go through ageism. What do I mean? The prejudice that seems to drive ageism prevents freedom and good, healthy adult play. I’ll explain how, but in so doing, I don’t want to forget, or ignore, the role in maintaining this deadening prejudice that you and I exercise. Yes, I’m calling us bigots. That is hard to acknowledge, hard to stand behind, hard to feel, and even harder to experience regularly. I mean it’s one thing to be a bigot, and it’s another thing to suffer bigotry. In this case, it’s both — people suffer at each other’s hands.

Here is more of what I mean. The belief behind ageism is that there is a natural limit to what is productive and useful. That sounds reasonable, but it is deadly when applied to people and play. People are assumed useless, too old to produce anything of value, and dismissed. Often, like street people or the disabled, they are made invisible. Play, especially adult play, is presumed frivolous, dismissed as unproductive, and ignored. It is treated, too often, like a waste of time. This all sounds like it is of marginal importance. That’s how deeply ageism affects the thinking process and deftly shapes our reality.

I am making the assertion that play, especially adult play, and older people both fall on the same continuum of ageism.  This has a major affect upon how much freedom we, as a society, will tolerate. Notice I said tolerate, not allow. There are some laws designed to regulate ageism, but very little discussion of its virulent effects, and even less self-regulation. It is as if, we don’t want to know, we do this to ourselves. It is no wonder we can do it to each other with such impunity!

So, who cares? Well, I do. As I have been growing older, I’ve been discovering there are a host of beliefs that impede my way. Ageism seems to de the most widespread and virulent of these beliefs. Not only is it prevalent in the culture; it seems to be internalized too, keeping me from knowing my own potentials, limiting my freedom by limiting my beliefs about my self.  I am crippled by my own beliefs. My mind undermines me. I don’t like it, and as I’ve been trying to go beyond these limitations, I’ve been finding that they run deep.

Here’s something interesting though, something that has inspired me to write. There is a way towards freedom, an antidote to the cloying limits of our culture and our own self-beliefs. Ageism, in fact all forms of internalized prejudice, are undermined by the practice of play.

Play, which looks like the most innocent form of growth, is just that, a fun way to discover the world. It isn’t productive, at least not in a cultural planned way, and is deeply generative. Play is viewed as frivolous, meaningless and a waste of time. This is, paradoxically, what makes it so liberating. It is a free activity. It isn’t necessarily free of all monetary weight, but it is free — when done for fun — without all measures of outcome. The freedom of play makes it, again paradoxically, the best agent of the new, unexpected and delightful. Lao Tzu, in Tao Te Ching (The Way Of Life), spoke about how what is, is aided by what is not. Play, especially adult play, is generative by not trying to be. Freedom is unleashed because play has no goals.

Play, however, resides on the same continuum of prejudice that we old folks are on. This makes it, like us, suspect and marginal. Play, which is delightful, accompanied with laughter, fun and great connectivity, has become invisible in just the way old people are unseen. Very often, no one takes the time, to really see what is there. We old folks suffer the indignity of being de-humanized. Play, which is an expression of freedom, is also unseen, and in its case, de-naturalized. A natural expression of Life’s unbounded creativity is turned into a pastime belonging only to childhood.

Play is a way to participate in the joyous, juicy, effulgent, ways of Life. Old folks, when they de-prioritize play, inadvertently participate in ageism, and more importantly cut themselves off from the energy of Life. The elderly usually need to conserve energy, and they also need to be fed the kind of energy that free play can provide. Play puts some cracks in the edifice of cultural belief, and to quote Leonard Cohen, that’s where the light gets in.

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For more pieces like this go to www.elderssalon.blogspot.com

To hear archived versions of Growing An Elder Culture go to www.elderculture.com

To read excerpts, or otherwise learn about Embracing Life go to www.davidgoff.net