You walk into a room. There’s a big-eyed purple elephant staring at you, rumbling your name, and your fingers get cold. Suddenly, you’re running toward him, arms dancing, while you sing Ooompa Loompa. Intuitively, you know this is the only way to keep from turning into a giant grape. You must make friends, and so you hop, hop, hop on one foot. It’s not working. Luckily, two friends behind you begin singing Ooompa Loompa. The elephant melts into a gray lake, and you’re swimming on your back, legs kicking, arms rolling.

You are nine years old, and you have just entered a play space. Without thinking about it, you and your friends escape alligators, diagnose patients, and sail with Noah on his ark. As children you play; then you get older. Play turns into work, and elephants and alligators turn into dusty toys on the windowsill.

We live in a society where as adults we work to work more. We work to buy a new car, to pay off debt on an old car, and to keep both cars working. We work every day from sunrise to sunset and rest just enough to continue this exhausting cycle. We don’t ride on, or even remember purple elephants. Our “to do” list takes our breath away and leaves us feeling frantic and incomplete. What would happen if we shifted this paradigm? What would happen if we could still access those old play spaces, still access that innocent joy and vitality? What if we worked to play more?

Children can help us. Children by definition play. They play all the time: past bedtime, upside down, and in trees. They are not paying bills, or thinking about eating protein. They’re not working out to lose ten pounds, or to win the basketball championship. What are they doing? Or, more importantly, HOW do they do it?

Children gravitate towards play anytime, anywhere. Any environment around them becomes a play space. This happens in a grocery store, the back seat of the car, or the living room. Play spaces arise spontaneously in the act of playing. They are not influenced by space or time. These psychological climates are like the sun that has the ability to shine everywhere. In a true play space there is no emphasis on future outcome. Results are immediate; no one wins or loses. Spoken and unspoken rules are mutually understood and can be broken or changed as long as the play space stays alive. To deny the game is to kill it.

Spoilsports vaporize the play environment. They remove themselves from the play world by stepping out of its psychological boundaries. They diminish its expanding nature. Although the play space may be localized to a single room, the players feel their atmosphere expand to the edges of the universe. To step out of this circle and say, “That’s stupid; I’m quitting,” limits the psychological play space and questions the worth of play itself by labeling it with a negative quality. Tricksters, on the other hand- like the playful figure of Coyote- never step out of the play world nor question its existence. They bring it new life. Coyote does the unexpected; she tricks people into the present moment. Someone can be running to a tree and a trickster will stick out her foot and trip that person into a pile of leaves, flipping the present moment onto its glorious back.

Play spaces thrive on novelty. They unfold themselves into newer and newer expressions, tricking habitual behavior onto its back and rendering it ineffective in directing us. And as we suspend our habitual thinking, we come alive in the moment. To find oneself in a play space is to find oneself creatively interacting with the present moment. Why would we want to do this? We all desire happiness. Play results naturally and spontaneously from the tracking of that desire, which lies at the core of our nature. The gravitational pathway towards joy is not a boring straight line of habitual pedestrian behavior, but a curvy play of the familiar unfolding itself into novelty. This natural process is fortified by a person’s ability to be present in action, to act spontaneously from a place of trust and non-judgment.

We have a notion in this culture that when we become adults we stop playing and start working. We have to survive. The solution is that a playful attitude is at the core of survival. Without play, workspaces collapse into drudgery and become unproductive. We get tired. We forget joy. But the ability to act spontaneously, the ability to flow freely is at the heart of productive work. A workspace that does not support and cultivate spontaneity and joyfulness cannot last long. It will either collapse in on itself, or happily be infiltrated by coyotes, and re-enlivened.

If you’re looking for permission to play, it’s granted—playing is our natural birthright. Just do it. Get out a box of crayons and attack the newspaper. Close your eyes and eat finger-foods with a friend. Go on a walk and let the flight of birds overhead tell you to turn left or right. Climb a tree. Speak gibberish with a friend. Climb a friend like a tree. Stand on one foot while talking with fellow employees in the hallway. Wherever you are, start. Go. Let yourself follow joyful impulses into strange new lands that are somehow familiar. Don’t think too much about it. Do it. Play. Now.

Selected Readings:
-DeKoven, Bernard. The Well-Played Game: A Player’s Philosophy (1978) Garden City, NY; Anchor Books ISBN 0-8-9
-Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens (1950), Boston, MA; Becon Press ISBN 0-8-7
-Pieper, Josef. Leisure: The Basis of Culture (1952), New York, NY A Mentor Book
-Rohnke, Karl. Cowstails and Cobras II (1989), Dubuque, IA; Kendall / Hunt Publishing Company ISBN 0-8-7