creative maverick

As I work on my proposal for a book on the themes of this blog, I’m starting to realise how important play is. To play all day and get paid sounds like the ultimate hedonism and while it should be fun, there is something more to this.

Why play?

When children play, they are learning about themselves and the world around them. There is usually no fixed destination in mind, they are simply going where they are drawn in the moment. It is an organic process of growth. Tomorrow’s play will never be exactly the same as today. The play maps the growing edge of their organism.

And then we reach adulthood and we stop.

We learn new skills for the job we are doing but the majority of us never enter that organic process again of following our growing edge wherever it leads us.

But not all of us. A small number of us remain ever curious and are hungry to learn new things. We are still willing to experiment and follow the drive in us to expand.

Barbara Sher said that Scanners are simply people who have grown up without losing that curiosity children have for everything new. In a similar way, people who want to play all day - Players? - have continued that process of learning and experimenting and growing.

That means we continue to evolve throughout our lives.

I have a suspicion (and a hope) we will be the last to succumb to old age and senility!

Thoughts? Comments?