The Game of Life

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Hurry Up and Play

Not surprisingly, the rush of modern life has begun to spill over, even into the ways we play. I thought about this recently on a leisurely bike ride along the Evanston lakefront. Around me zoomed bikers hunched over sleek machines, dressed like Flash Gordon. I imagined they were officially playing while simultaneously getting in their prescribed 30 minutes of three-times-weekly aerobic exercise. No wasting the day here.

Later, as I drove down to Chicago’s North Side, I passed a storefront window of men and women running on treadmills in a space that looked like it once might have been home to a dry cleaner or a restaurant. I admired their efforts but couldn’t help wondering whether a judge had sentenced them to grimly sweat it out in public.

It’s hard to blame people. Our high-tech life combined with the accelerated pace and insecurity of the modern workplace have fostered a culture that seems to be always working, always rushed, always (at least electronically) connected. In this environment play becomes frivolous. Yet we do manage to play. Being human, we just can’t help it. Lenore Terr, a psychiatrist at the University of California, San Francisco, and author of Beyond Love and Work: Why Adults Need to Play (Scribner, 1999), argues that play is crucial at every stage of life. In play, we discover pleasure, cultivate feelings of accomplishment, and acquire a sense of belonging. When we play, we learn and mature and—no small matter—find an outlet for stress. 'Play is a lost key,' Terr writes. 'It unlocks the door to ourselves.'

When we’re in a state of intense play, our cares and worries tend to vanish. Kayaking down a river, playing golf, or thoroughly engrossed in a good novel, we feel pleasurably alive, lighthearted. But play can also take us to new heights of conscious awareness. Athletes refer to moments when they’re in 'the zone,' when body, mind, and spirit acquire a kind of transcendent rhythm and performance is at a peak. Essayist Diane Ackerman, borrowing a phrase from 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham, describes such moments in terms of 'deep play,' when, 'levered by ecstasy, one springs out of one’s mind.'

In the zone of deep, transcendent play there is calm but also focused readiness. Emotions are primed and ready for release. It is a state not unlike a kind of simulated anxiety attack, say researchers, but without the adrenaline and endocrine responses that normally accompany a real emergency.

Such moments of heightened awareness represent what University of Chicago researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has described as a state of 'flow,' when a person becomes so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter. Awareness of the task at hand acquires a kind of meditative brilliance. Mindfulness zeroes in like a laser beam. Everything feels in harmony. In the flow, we feel satisfied.

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