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Day 24<br />
Play!<br />
When you think fondly about your boyhood days, you probably think about<br />
the time you spent playing. While we now associate playing with toys, your<br />
best memories probably don’t involve plastic crap at all. You likely think<br />
about catching fireflies, building dirt ramps for your bike, playing capture<br />
the flag, having dirt clod fights, playing wall ball, and hunting for sparrows<br />
with your BB gun.<br />
As we got older, those endless summer nights of play came to an end as<br />
we were expected to take on more responsibility and act more “grown up.”<br />
We accepted new rules about how to behave and what to prioritize. We<br />
stopped playing and started working.<br />
Here at the Art of Manliness we’re about the business of helping men<br />
man up and quit being perpetual boys. But becoming an adult man shouldn’t<br />
mean that you completely extinguish your boyish spirit and vitality. Indeed,<br />
an irrepressible boyishness is essential to a life of fun, humor, and happiness.<br />
While becoming a man means putting away some childish things,<br />
playtime shouldn’t be one of them.<br />
The Importance of Play<br />
Most grown-ups view play as a kind of dress-rehearsal for adulthood, believing<br />
that once we become adults, the need for play evaporates. But little of<br />
children’s play relates to actual adult experiences; most of us don’t grow up<br />
to become Spiderman or a swashbuckling pirate. Children play simply for<br />
play’s sake, for the pleasure they get from it. And it turns out that adults<br />
need to play for the very same reason. We shouldn’t grow out of play; even<br />
our biology rejects the idea.