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30 Days to a better man
4. Social Play. Social play encompasses a wide variety of forms, from
roughhousing with other guys, to flirting with the opposite sex. Dr.
Brown argues that “the basis of human trust is established through
play signals.” If you’ve ever bonded with a friend by wrestling, or felt
a sense of belonging after playing a game of ultimate frisbee, you
understand how this works.
5. Imaginative and Pretend Play. This is the kind of play that comes
easiest to kids and hardest to adults. We lose a lot of our capacity for
imagination as we age. But if you’ve ever gone paintballing, dressed up
for an adult Halloween party, or wholly let go of your adult cynicism
at Disneyworld, you know that we still have some capacity for it.
6. Storytelling/Narrative Play. Storytelling is not something we ordinarily
think of as play. But as the Institute for Play argues, “It is in
[our] capacity to produce a sense of timelessness, pleasure and the
altered state of vicarious involvement that identifies narrative and storytelling
with states of play.”
7. Transformative/Integrative and Creative Play. Sometimes we can
use our play to create new things and foster ideas. You can brainstorm
crazy ideas for an invention, jam out on your guitar as you think of new
songs to write, or make a funny video of your cat to post on YouTube.
Today’s Task:
Play!
While play may seem like a silly frivolity, it’s actually an essential part of
our health and well-being. Manning up doesn’t mean turning into a robotic
stiff. You should also maintain some of your boyish spirit. You need to make
room in your life for things that you don’t have to do, but that you simply
do because it gives you pleasure. So today you have to spend at least 30
minutes in pure play.
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