time enough to play

4 minute read

“It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.”

Donald Winnicott.

As far as possible I tried to avoid the realm of idealism, but I have to confess finding it difficult today. 

I can't help but imagine what the world would be like if it were organised around encouraging play and an individual sense of creative sovereignty. 

Don't get me wrong, but could you imagine a world in which, instead of work your daily practice was to play your way to the solution solutions we faced - be that as individual individuals, as communities, as nations, or even as a whole world?

I don't mean that we just invented games and spent our time dressing up and pretending to be people we are not. Although it is arguable that is exactly what we do anyway, just that we're not always the ones in charge of inventing the rules.

So maybe it would be better to ask - can you imagine the world in which you got to collaborate in making the rules for the games of life that we play?

The truth is, you do, it's just that, some of the games we are invited to play have harsh consequences if we withdraw from them, because they have been set up in such a way as to profit the small number who set the rules in their favour.