"Helping people feel just a little more playful, especially if it's connected to their work, or with anything they do that's more typically associated with words like painful, tedious, boring, stressful (as opposed to words like 'fun'), doesn't have to mean giving them a game. Even something as simple as making your documentation more compelling (and even a little whimsical), can make a huge difference."
To which I can't help adding yes, and yes again. Helping people feel just a little more playful is what it's all about, isn't it? Helping them feel a just a little more playful means helping them feel a little more positive and a little more empowered and a little healthier and a little stronger and a little more together and a little more alive.
"Firstly, find out where you are hanging on to seriousness. Where is your life governed by doubt, worry, anxiety, fear of the future, etc. Where have you suppressed playfulness in favour of gloom? Be honest with yourself!
"Secondly, define for yourself what 'playing' means to you. I may have a completely different definition of the word than you, and therefore my "playing" will be different to yours! What would you do if you decided to play? Go to a musical, play chasings with your partner, go to a footy game, play hide-and-seek with your kids, buy a super-soaker and squirt cars in the street, etc.?
"Thirdly, find examples in your surroundings of people that "play" the way you would like to. What are they doing? How often do they do that? What sort of people are they? What can you learn from them?
"Lastly, take action!! Find at least two occasions in a week in which you can play out full. Go past your own boundaries, act a little crazy, do things you would never do before, make a fool of yourself, and laugh out loud! If that is too much, do something that is less "out there," but still is a stretch in your model of the world, and then do a little more the next week.
"Seriously...we need more fun and play in our lives. You will not only feel great, you will have an enormous influence on the people around you also. Just try it: walk past somebody and give them an honest smile. You will make their day."
And when you are ready for some advanced fun, might I suggest perhaps a Pointless Game or a round or two of Mondo Croquet?
Today's FunCast is an exhortation. I exhort in virtual print here. I quote:
"A Frisbee, in the hands of people in business dress in a public park, is a weapon against fear. A basketball dribbled along a downtown sidewalk, is a guided missile aimed at the heart of war. Playing with a yo-yo, a top, a kite, a loop of yarn in a game of cats’ cradle, all and each a victory against intimidation. Playing openly, in places of business, in places where we gather to eat or travel or wait, is a gift of hope, an invitation to sanity in a time when we are on the brink of global madness."
I was clicking my way through a site called "Singlenesia." Amused and bemused by the "The Barry Bittwister Cabal" and all that it apparently stands for (more later), I conceptually limped my way to a tract called The Way of Fun.
I read it. I laughed. I cried. "Wait a minute. Isn't this something I wrote? Isn't this the very core belief of that which I have publicly proclaimed to be the Playful Path?
And, behold and lo, it wasn't and it was! Written, in apparent fact, not by me at all, but by a seer named "Baba Bar Ran" and prepared by the "Universal Church O' Fun" (whose motto is: "One Faith Fits All"). I found this downloadable, printoutable, foldupable piece of playful pith completely corroborating and confirming, and maybe more.
There are only three steps. Allow me to present Step Three:
"When we achieve oneness with Fun, we no longer need to have Fun or make Fun.
"Instead of doing things for Fun, everything we do is Fun naturally, without effort.
"Do not become discouraged in aspiring to be one with Fun. At first, the experience will be fleeting. Perhaps coming unexpectedly while making Fun.
"With faithful practice, we are able to hold on to the feeling longer and longer. We become Fun for hours - then for a whole day. In time, our entire lives can become Fun.
BNC Chess. Why BNC? The authors explain: "50 ohm BNC, SMA, and N terminators with various BNC, SMA, N, APC7, F, UHF connectors and inter-series adapters; or any other RF connectors you can find around the house. White gets nickel or stainless steel and black gets gold top pieces. p.s. Dad lost the first game."
Aside from the beauty and functionality of the design, and the amazing feat of playfulness required to re-envision the form and function of electronic findings into a chess set, what I like best about this achievement of junkish art is the playful appropriateness of what the inventors named it. The Connector Chess Set.
Yes, yes, it's made out of connectors. And they had to find new connections between the connectors in order to make the connection between connectors and chess pieces. But imagine the connections forged when they created the chess set together. Dad lost the first game? When you imagine how deeply connected both father and son became, making this beautiful set together, out of findings. When you think of how wonderfully connected it feels when your son is successful, more successful, even, than you. Well, that's the kind of loss we all should suffer.
SAN FRANCISCO / Hundreds attend mass pillow fight Yeah. Apparently, that's what happened all right. Hundreds of people. With pillows. It's kinda wonderful and everything with the spontaneity and surprise and hitting. But I dunno, I think maybe helmets with face guards might be required to make the event more fun for the hit-upon, both young and old. I guess the memory of a pillow fight with my sister 55 years ago, and the subsesquent bloody nose, still stains my affection for games that involve whacking people with anything.
Odd, though, when you think how central the idea of "Soft War" was to the founding of the New Games, uh, Foundation. Googling for Soft War, I came across this moment of clarity from "Kellee: "Soft War was a way of allowing people to relieve tension by realizing that it was okay to release primal energy into the air without anybody getting hurt. But, if both sides agree that physically hurting each other is okay, then maybe they still get away without hurting in other ways...Because sometimes, we are still animals that pretend to be civilized."
I was recently revisiting the idea of "The Daily Game" and, musing amongst several significant implications thereof, realized I had written a poem again. And that it needed to be heard, like all poems do. And so, with this week's FunCast, I get to read it to you.
"Thing-a-ma-bots" is a silly game, naturally, because I designed it. (So this is not a review, even though I personally happen to think that the fun to be had is most clearly MajorFUN variety.)
Built completely from parts of other games, the parts I Iike best – Thing-a-ma-Bots is a 'junkyard approach' to card game design. A unique, new game, built from a combination of rules from other, older games. A card game designed to challenge everyone equally, kids and adults, based on collections of rules that make people exercise both mental and social abilities. Rules that are often very surprising, and most important to me, rules that make people laugh. Like, for example, that bit from the game Steal the Old Man's Bundle where "If you play a card that matches the top card of an opponent's bundle, you steal their whole of their bundle and add it to the top of yours, placing the matching card that you played on top." Very fun little bit. Makes it impossible to know who's going to win until the very last minute of the game. (more)
Considering the vastness of the commercial and historical forces moving you towards doing something to show someone your love, here are a few more honest, genuine, loving ideas and resources that you might find of special significance.
To start, here's a quote from an article by Fred Donaldson, called: "Peace is Child's Play."
"We have lived life as if it is easier and safer not to love. But it is our ability to love that...more than anything else heals our hurts and helps us find our way back to peace. J Glenn Gray (1970, p. 213) realized this at the end of his tour of duty in World War II when he wrote in his diary, 'And this morning when I rose, tired and distraught from bed, I knew that in order to survive this time I must love more. There is no other way . . ..' Chris Hedges (2002, p.184) finishes his examination of war with the same feelings. He writes that, 'To survive as a human being is possible only through love.'
"This love is an impulse to openness or intent to kindness and compassion. Contrary to what we might fear we are left not in an identity crisis, but in an identity expansion which makes us, not less human, but more humane. I spent an afternoon playing with fifteen street boys one afternoon in Cape Town, South Africa. We all left the park touching and hugging each other; one of the older boys asked me through an interpreter if he could learn to play like this with children. Play's love has everything to do with a willingness to be vulnerable in an unconditional and fierce commitment to another's thriving. In a very real and practical sense this means that as Urie Bronfenbrenner said, 'for a child to develop normally, somebody has to be irrationally crazy about that kid.'"
And here, again, are a few of my articles about loving fun for your Valentenian joy:
BNC Chess
Beloved Lovers,