When I was in kindergarten, when my dad was stationed in Newport, Rhode Island at the Naval War College, we had this checker patterned blue couch that I used to love to run and jump over. I would fling myself over the back of the couch like a vault olympian and circle back around to do it again. And again. And again
There was this one time, though, I forgot to jump. I just ran directly into the hard edge of the back of the couch and knocked the breath out of my lungs.
I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the first time I ever felt terror.
I couldn’t control what was happening to my body. I couldn’t breathe. Something I never really thought about doing was suddenly something I didn’t know how to do, and I didn’t know how to start doing it again.
My mom calmly grabbed me and said over and over, just breathe Michelle, just breathe, (how? I thought) and those seconds I struggled for breath, with the blue checkered couch looming above me, felt like forever. Felt excruciating. When I finally gasped in air and could breathe, she told me, Michelle you knocked the wind out of your own self.
That’s how I felt since October.
When I first started writing about play, I felt like I’d discovered something important. Like, a life hack to well-being. I thought, this is something that we should all strive to do and, if we all take it reasonably seriously, then our world will become better.
And then my attention was diverted by the brutal reality of what people were going through in Palestine, the Congo, and Sudan.
Like that time with our old blue checkered couch, I felt like the wind was knocked out of me. Like I couldn’t control a vital force that was important to my survival. Like I accidentally didn’t jump while throttling towards a massive object. And like I didn’t want to play with it or anything else anymore.
I felt wretched.
Anything I started to write for Play Palais felt disingenuous.
I fell back into the societal trap that I had come out so proudly against. Is play actually vital? I asked myself. Or is it something only some people are allowed to do and others can’t because they are trying to survive. Is it right for me to play and talk about play while my others on this earth are fighting for their survival?
And I danced with the guilt and shame of understanding that the only thing that had changed between now and before was merely that I had been made aware of these things happening to others.
As I tried to type, an elephant in the room with me stared militantly down my back, impressing on me to… what? I couldn’t face it directly so I wasn’t sure.
And then I realized.
It was impressing on me to keep going.
Because, play reveals the true self.
The self when you are simply being.
It bypasses the false self, the facade you have slowly built up over time to conform with external expectations.
And I wager that so much of what knocked the wind out of me is created because of false selves.
To tap into play and flow and enjoyment of the present, I wager, is to heal and dissolve the constructed self built out of fear.
Ah. Okay.
I’m writing Play Palais because I see you as me. I want to live a peaceful and joyful life and I believe you should live a peaceful and joyful life.
You and I, I believe, we’re the same.
We started the exact same. As brilliant little souls in an infant’s body, unaware of this world’s logic and rules. And then we all started to shift and shape slowly into moving images that conformed with the expectations of our parents, of our peers, of our friends, of our partners, of our towns, of our cities, of our countries.
Think about the version of you that loses yourself through play and creation - doesn’t that mask come off then? At least a little bit? Don’t the hard lines of definition start to slip and slide into something less definable and something more you? And more me?
Like the flow we seek through play, we are fluid. All of us.
Unless we allow it, there is nothing that can define us - regardless of what we look like, sound like, pee like, believe like. And through play we are able to tap into this energy - losing ourselves into the flow of the ineffable - dropping the noise of what we should and should not do or could or could not do.
This is what my guiding principle: what I desire for myself, I desire for everyone else.
So we all deserve play, no matter when and where and why.
I will continue writing. Sorry for the delay. It was a necessary sojourn into my shadow self to reinforce my thoughts on play.
Here’s to a world where we all play together.
(cover image by David Shrigley, Instantané)