"Play is our free connection to pure possibility"

In case you need yet another validation for the fun you're having, Hara Estroff Marano's article "The Power of Play" is a treasure worth cherishing. Here are some highlights:

"Most of us think of adult play as respite or indulgence, but having fun is no trivial pursuit. In fact, it's crucial to put mental creativity, health and happiness...

"But there is also new evidence that play does much more. It may in fact be the highest expression of our humanity, both imitating and advancing the evolutionary process. Play appears to allow our brains to exercise their very flexibility, to maintain and even perhaps renew the neural connections that embody our human potential to adapt, to meet any possible set of environmental conditions.

"...today we often use our leisure time not necessarily to play, but in performance of various sorts of work, whether it's time at the health spa or artists' retreats.

"...It isn't even clear whether we are playing more or less than we used to. If we're playing more, it doesn't feel like it. Just in the past 30 years, there has been a cultural shift reemphasizing work and getting ahead.

"...Through play, contends psychiatrist Lenore Terr, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California at San Francisco, 'we get control over the world. We get to manipulate symbols, control the outcome of events.' Terr's own now-classic work with children traumatized by physical and sexual abuse demonstrates how clearly play is necessary to mental health.

"In the aftermath of trauma children lose their flexibility. They play, but their play is obsessive; they stay stuck, repeating the traumatic episode endlessly. 'Post-traumatic play demonstrates that if we don't find a way out of difficult situations, we will play much of our lives over and over again.'

"Play is an opening to our very being, Terr observes in Beyond Love and Work: Why Adults Need to Play. It permits us emotional discharge, but in a way that carries little risk. In fact, she says, play is not just an activity--it's a state of mind, and 'all the mental activity of play comes at you sideways.' Therein lies its value: the mental activity is never the direct goal. Terr uses play therapy as a way to allow children--and adults, who often remain frozen in patterns of play originating in fearful experiences in childhood--to create new endings for their experience.

"...Play, argues Brian Sutton-Smith, Ph.D., is more than an attitude. And more than an action. While it encompasses development, it's not about that--it's about pure unalloyed enjoyment. Professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, Sutton-Smith is still the ranking dean of play studies. He considers play an alternative cultural form, like art and music.

"...We play because it reflects the brains we have and the cultures we live in. By and large, he points out, 'the connections in the brain fade away unless used. We know that early stimulation of children leads to higher cognitive scores. Playful stimulation probably hits all kinds of synaptic possibilities. It is all make-believe and all over the map. The potentiality of the synapses and the potentiality of playfulness are a beautiful marriage.'

"When adults play, notes Sutton-Smith, citing a series of Dutch studies of video-game playing, their memory is better. They are cognitively more capable. And they are happier.

"...How we play is related, in myriad ways, to our core sense of self. Play is an exercise in self-definition; it reveals what we choose to do, not what we have to do. We not only play because we are. We play the way we are. And the ways we could be. Play is our free connection to pure possibility."