Let’s Play

A flood of laughter calls us
to become beyond
our ascertained
rules of engagement

When was the last time you laughed whole-heartedly? It’s crazy that we leave playing to our children! In my view it’s a misunderstanding of what we have come here to be. We created an artificial boundary between being a child and being an adult. Playing creates lots of positive emotions. It enables us to shift our internal chemistry and our energy field which in turn influence our wellbeing and the unfolding of our life. When we play and laugh we radiate positive frequencies all around us.

When I was in midst a protracted illness and abyss in my life, playing was the last thing on my mind. I was steeped in despair and was thinking about all the problems 24/7. Through the energy work I was studying, it finally became clear to me that to get out of the situation I had to feel better than my circumstances and increase my energy frequency. There was no way I could move forward from the state of being I was in. But what to do to not think about the pain and the problems? Bit by bit I developed activities that took my mind at least temporarily off the problems and opened up a sense of possibility. I started watching old children’s movies and reading classical children’s books I found online. When I laughed for the first time, I was in shock that it was possible to laugh, no matter what. I added children’s songs and sang along. It created an atmosphere of how I felt when I was a child. That was the only thing I could take at that stage. It had to be as light and as removed from my situation as possible.

Later, when I started to feel a bit better, I progressed to other activities, romantic comedies, music, dancing in my house, picking up my guitar, …. In my meditations I imagined I would laugh and opportunities for laughter started to show up. People wondered what was going with me, suspecting all sorts of things. In truth, not much had changed at that point, except for my decision to play, no matter what.

We get this strange idea that as adult we just have to be serious and responsible all day long and that play is for children and at most for our holidays or weekends. At work we put on a mask and are serious all day long. And workdays make up the majority of our life… At home, we numb ourselves through TV, the net, … Even on holidays we think about work left behind. If we have children and play with them, we do it for them, like a duty. We get so uptight about life, so problem–focussed. Yet that doesn’t solve the problems. On the contrary, it makes them worst. It’s all energy. What we focus on grows. … When we feel happy and optimistic, solutions gradually start to become accessible. Playing leverages everything else.

Do we want to be the serious, uptight, got-to-solve-problems person that the larger society expects us to be? That’s just who we got used to be to fit in, to make sure people don’t think we are silly, irresponsible or even lazy. To make sure people approve of us. In truth, people love people who are playful. In a working environment people love leaders who can laugh and are playful. They are likely to put more effort in for them and are more inspired and energised. It changes our world and makes other people’s world a little lighter. How does it feel to laugh?

PRACTICE

It seems all common sense but we forget most of the time. Reflect in what ways you could play more and make a commitment to create more playtime in your life. Try out something cool that you have not tried before. You can create reminders on your phone or create an agreement with someone to remind each other to play.

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