Importance of Play
When we see a child running around with a toy airplane in one hand and yelling at the top of his lungs, I don’t expect anyone to think, ‘Wow, he is greatly expressing his emotions of the past and present, and developing a way of setting goals for the future!’
I remember when I was six years old and I would see my mom and dad come home from work and they would be talking a bundle of nonsense about work. To me it seemed unimportant and stupid. Apparently the thoughts go both ways. What seems like a stupid childish moment or action is actually quite important to the child. The same goes for the adult. As I read the article from the Atlantic, I thought back to moments in my childhood that were important to me. The first jump into a pool, the first puzzle I solved, the first time I had a friend come over to my house. All this seems so childish to me now, but as I look back at that exact moment I realize that there was nothing else that mattered at that moment. I was so fixated in my ‘achievement’ that I felt it was the most incredible thing I’ve ever done. Maybe we need that same prospective in our lives today. We need to stimulate ourselves more often. We need to give ourselves a simple pat on the back for the things we do right, instead of a kick in the head for everything we do wrong. Play to a child is like work for us in a way. We don’t really know why we do it, but we do it for a specific reason as well. (hard to explain).