Dear 4 year old me,
I'm going to describe to you what playing means to us throughout every phase of our growth until this very day. Because I never heard it then, let me just tell you how cute and adoring you are. You'd be a prideful lil girl to know how fun you're going to turn out to be :)
As a four year playing is like fluttering around from flower to flower touching all limits of imaginary realms. There's an absent-minded side of it where imagination completely overwhelms attachment to linear reality. "Where do you go when you do that?" you'll later be asked…
As a nine year old playing feels like competing and running an playing defense and making touchdown catches and 3 point baskets and balls, Balls, BALLS!! But as a fourteen year old, I play lots of sports though I'm not really playing at those. Playing feels like laying in bed with my headphones, listening to Hot 97 radio. Hearing hip hop through head phones late at night is going to be your favorite thing ever. You'll also learn a lot about sex from the radio around this time too and thank goodness Dr. Judy talked to you about sex because mommy isn't really going to talk to you about relationships or mechanics or logistics.
When you're nineteen playing is going to be learning to love beaches for the first time in Australia. Its also going to be secretly making out with another girl (I know! I freaked out too, its ok though and is actually pretty obvious to a lot of your life long friends. Surprise!) It will also be driving through London with the first boy you'll be in love with. You'll actually see Pink Floyd's Factory - you'll know exactly what I mean by then too. This is an important one because it stays with you - playing will mean learning how to laugh at your "failures" because they aren't really "failures" you're just really "hard" "on" "yourself."
By the time you're twenty three playing is like a mash up of all the best parts from before…with beach time too! You'll be playing lots of basketball, adventuring through South Dakota, laughing endlessly with roommates/future life mates - that's right, we're a clan! Playing is going to be making up games in an old convent in rural South Dakota while horses occasionally graze on the ridge outside your dining room window. Playing will be discussing colonization and land rights and human rights and philosophical decency until there are no more thoughts to be thought in those brain fractals and this will become the essence of your ability to synthesize experience and context. You'll also spend a month playing in Central America, it won't always feel like playing but please believe it most certainly is and you get some good angels guiding your journey with prevalent frequency.
Playing at twenty seven involves a lot of glitter, make-up, and playing dress-up. Oh yeah, I know. We're into dressing up now but trust me, come on out your imagination girl and throw on some costumes to jazz it up out here too! You'll relive being in marching band playing your trumpet and you'll dance in multiple streets, not just "the streets" but literally lots of streets…you'll dance in lots of streets. I know! It is as fun as it sounds and its that much more fun because everyone else is dancing in the streets also. So playing is really rad at 27. Playing is also throwing house parties and having lots of interesting people circulating through our party spaces.
As you get to be thirty two, playing involves bicycles - riding them, fixing them, making up fairy stories about them, you know... all the things we love doing with our brain! We love camping and being under the stars and can see mommy again. She's there, we both had trouble seeing each other for a while and we both played our parts in making that true. But it all happens in the order it is going to happen to go in. :)
Playing now includes board games. Nothing close to the vast realms that Candyland and Chutes & Ladders brought us to, but epic for sure! Playing definitely feels different, I think our self-awareness fills its way out over the years of experience and context. But playing also doesn't feel all that different because it makes me giggle and lose my breath laughing and joy sure feels like its a whole lot similar to how it felt then.
So there's that. I'm proud of all the fractals you've yet to see and happy for the ones you won't see. :)
Sincerely,
Me
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What would you write your 4 year old self about playing?
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