On Playfulness And Creativity

 

Some Mid-March Thoughts around Playfulness and Creativity:

1. The body feels different in the water, freer and more playful. One of my favourite movements in the pool is to lie on my back, arms outstretched and swish my body from side to side. I dare you to try that and not feel like a playful, cavorting, sea lion.

As adults, we’ve lost our sense of play. Remember playing as a child? No rules (almost) or lines or time restrictions. No umpires or referees. No self-consciousness or expectations. Just pure enjoyment. At least, that’s how my playtime as a child was. I know that nowadays children’s playtime is more organized and restricted.

I think as adults, we tend to see play as fruitless, a waste of time. These days, when I say I’m ‘playing’, I mean tennis or pickleball, and yes there are rules and lines and the desire to win a point. Once the game is done, all thoughts of having won or lost disappear. It’s the satisfaction of having hit the sweet spot, having made a shot that felt good right in the moment. But that’s not really the play I’m talking about here. I’m thinking about unstructured childlike play that feels free and allows the mind to roam.

We have the expression 'The play of ideas,' but we don't realize that this is a prescription: 'Play, and you will have ideas.'" -Julia Cameron

 

My attempt with watercolours

2. Why be creative? During a zoom call with a group of women, all creative deep-thinkers, one woman wondered why she felt guilty when she postponed doing something creative. And why this desire to be more creative as we age, even if we never saw ourselves that way before? Is it mostly older women who feel like this, not men?  We pondered these questions as we talked.

Was it the need to leave something of ourselves behind? Something tangible. Something others could point to and say, “Look, Mary/Mom/Grandma made that.” And why the guilt? Was it because we are conditioned to wanting to feel productive? Or, maybe it wasn’t guilt she felt, but a desire to create, to express oneself that was nagging at her inside.  We know that there are fewer days ahead than behind. And one day, when we cease to exist, evidence will be left that we were once here, that our lives mattered. 

But I think the desire to create is more than that, more than just a legacy. It’s different parts of yourself coming together - your experience, your talent, your learning, your emotions, your thoughts, your imagination – in one expression. With your creation you say: this is a glimpse of who I am. It satisfies a piece of your soul. It gives permission to parts of yourself that you haven’t attended to in a while, when you were busy doing all the things life demanded of you, working, raising a family.

When we create, or when we play with freedom and abandon, we go beneath the daily chatter and emerge refreshed, altered in some ways, deeply satisfied in others. Perhaps the desire to create as we get older is merely the desire to return to imaginative, unstructured childlike play.