Learning to Play
One of my new things (of which there are many these days
—I feel sort of adolescent, changing and growing and trying
new things faster than I can keep up with, in a good way) is
playing.
Playing: spending time lavishly, staring into space,
wandering around the block, sitting on the kitchen floor
eating blueberries with Mac.
My goal upon returning to real life after lake life is to
keep my summer heart—my flexible, silly, ready-to-play,
ever-so-slightly irresponsible heart. What I’ve been
delighted to find is that it’s not that our real life is all wrong,
by any means—it’s not that I’m doing work I hate or that
I’m ill-fit for the life we’ve made.
It’s that for all sorts of reasons, I default to hustle mode
all too often.
Hustle is the opposite of heart.
And so one of the tiny little things I’m learning to do is
to play—essentially, to purposely waste time. Strategically
avoid strategy, for five minutes at a time. Intentionally not
be intentional about every second. Have no purpose—on
purpose.
There are lots of conversations right now about how to