chapter 4. PLAY #2
chapter 4. PLAY #2
on the same game and played differently
The text of this post has been translated from Dutch to English with DeepL. It will be manually edited and streamlined soon
THE IMAGE of two trigrams: Mountain above, Water below. That looks like a wild mountain stream. Tempestuous, clear, unpredictable, dangerous.
Richard Wilhelm translated the title of this chapter as Youthful Folly. An untamed mountain stream as an image for a youth full of stubbornness and rebellion. Other I Ching translations use titles such as Youth, Immaturity and Youthful Inexperience.
Youth and play are each other's synonyms. If you take away a child's play, you deny his youth. And, continuing to play all your life means preserving your youth. For this chapter, I choose as title: Play.
Be honest, what would we have done without play? Without play, how would we have gotten to know and understand each other? Play is imagination - today I am fireman, you an animal doctor or rather an explorer? Who is Batman and who is the villain. Slip into the skin of ... and without needing anything but the imagination, the adventure can begin!
With play comes humor and with humor comes relativity. Do you dare to play? An instant time machine is at your disposal. Back to an earlier time or with a giant leap to a time to come. It is all free, it is child's play.
Every child knows the wonderful game of imitation. Walk and dance like your idol and even if you can't sing very well yet, you already know how it feels. Today you are an astronaut, tomorrow you will win a gold medal just like that and you can decide for what.
Unhampered by conventions and an oppressive straitjacket, play reveals hidden shortcuts and creates desire paths. Without play, how could we discover what else is possible? While thinking you see the limitation, while playing there is always a new beginning.Â
The hexagram of Play is an inversion of that of the previous chapter, Beginning. This time, these paired chapters are not opposites, but follow and complement each other. It is not necessary to know the game to participate, starting will suffice.
Anyone can draw, as long as it doesn't have to become anything. As soon as the pencil touches the paper, you follow its line, you follow the strokes, and the scratches - and watch with curiosity what is going to emerge this time. Making music, dancing, playing soccer - you can do it all, as long as you keep tinker, doodle and daydream. And as long as you don't worry about the opinion of others.Â
Playing is sweet and innocent. A few scratches and a band-aid - and then on again. The sense of time is absent and before you know it the day is over. More often than not, the game seeks risk and danger and takes you places you would never have gone otherwise. You feel the power of your muscles, the skill of your hands and the resilience of your word. Meeting danger and fear makes courageous, and brings awe.
from Stefano Mancuso: The roots of plant intelligence
There comes a time of bread on the table. Play was for the little ones and when they get older, it's out of play, it's time for serious business.
At some point as we get older, however, we are made to feel guilty for playing. We are told that it is unproductive, a waste of time, even sinful. The play that remains is, like league sports, mostly very organized, rigid, and competitive. We strive to always be productive, and if an activity doesn’t teach us a skill, make us money, or get on the boss’s good side, then we feel we should not be doing it. Sometimes the sheer demands of daily living seem to rob us of the ability to play.
Play - Stuart Brown
Play turns into study. After study comes labor, and by working hard, you earn leisure. In leisure time, play is now called sport and free inspirations are exchanged for rules. Competition is the engine and at the end there is one winner - the rest just weren't good enough.
Playing opens unsuspected possibilities and makes a person more complete, but this new kind of game forms one-sided specialists. An exclusively left-turn skater and a sprinter, who does not endure more than ten seconds. The unexpected is gone: the game is normalized.
After more than a century of wonderful soccer play, there are only a small number of clubs left that matter. They have the money, buy the best players and win the prizes. The rest is broke and serve as extras. The advertising on the jerseys is from a gambling company or praises cars and airlines. Trading players is paid for out of the coffers of data giants, banks and insurance companies. How much more fun and simple it was to spend hours after school playing ball in the streets with friends.
It sounds like a conspiracy. First you deprive children of space. The streets are full of cars and the only place left to play is a soccer cage. And then you also take away their time through an iPhone and games. What follows is autistic screen addiction and the play is gone.
A fence surrounds the nature park, what remains of free wildness. Climbing trees is out of the question, making fires is strictly forbidden and building huts is unthinkable. How can a fence ever really protect the fragile greenery if no play is allowed?
Emma Marris, author of Rambunctious Garden, writes:
Which means that they (the national parks) are the absolute worst places to take your children on vacation, because you can't do anything there. You can't climb the trees. You can't fish the fish. You can't make a campfire out in the middle of nowhere. You can't take home the pinecones. There are so many rules and restrictions that from a child's point of view, this is, like, the worst nature ever. Because children don't want to hike through a beautiful landscape for five hours and then look at a beautiful view. That's maybe what we want to do as adults, but what kids want to do is hunker down in one spot and just tinker with it, just work with it, just pick it up, build a house, build a fort, do something like that.
There is always hope. Free play lurks beneath the surface. Let children make mistakes and let adults make mistakes. Shake off the straitjacket of assessment, rewards and likes. Give confidence and responsibility. After all, in the real game you can't make mistakes.
Mountain and Water - the metaphor of a wild mountain stream - the image of a freely meandering lowland river. Risk and dangerous play are things you shouldn't deny children. Let them play with fire and use sharp scissors and knives. Let them build huts and climb trees. It wakes them up and they learn to recognize danger at lightning speed. Keeping them fearfully away from it, that’s the real folly.