“What do you do for fun?” Once I was asked this at a wedding by someone I didn’t know very well and honestly, the question stumped me. Racking my brain, all I could think of were things I did outside of the corporate job I held at the time. “Well,” I began, “I like to exercise and read and… and… drink wine?” The person I was speaking to seemed just as unimpressed by my answer as I was. Shifting on my feet I felt compelled to return the question. Without missing a beat, he replied, “Fishing. Camping. Four-wheel driving.” “Oh,” was all I could say before taking another sip of wine.
Though this exchange took place several years ago, something about it has long bothered me and I’ve never really been able to articulate why until recently.
You see, last Christmas, my children conspired with their father to buy me a pair of roller skates. At forty, I was more than a little reluctant to hit the roller rink. However, not wanting to disappoint anyone I tied up my laces and strapped on my wrist guards – because forty remember – and off we went.
Having not been in a pair of skates since I was a kid, I deferred to my children for guidance. Our roles reversed as they began teaching me the ropes or should I say, rolls. Though I was rather wobbly to begin with, eventually and literally after much handholding by my kids, I got the hang of it. And you know what? It was fun. Like really, really fun.
Not only is it the satisfaction of taking on a new task, there’s also the thrill that comes with moving your body in a way, and at a pace, that you normally wouldn’t. Additionally, there’s the low-level risk that you might actually hurt yourself, which forces you to stay – for want of a better term – ‘in the moment’. And then there’s the Lols. So many Lols! But most importantly, I really feel like it’s the fact that I’m doing an activity with no other end than itself.
I’m not trying to be a champion roller skater (if that’s even a thing), not training to join a roller derby team, I’m not even trying to be better at it from one week to the next. I’m just doing it purely for the fun of it, which has made me realise how little we do this in adulthood.
Not just child’s play
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, fun is defined as: “Something that provides amusement or enjoyment. Specifically playful, often boisterous, action or speech.”
To be clear, I’m not saying that my life has been devoid of amusement or enjoyment since roller skating re-entered my life, far from it. There are certainly activities I do for amusement, (hello Netflix) and enjoyment (here comes the exercising/reading/wine tasting again).
What I do believe has been lacking however are the more playful aspects: attributes (if you were to use the above definition) you’d be more likely to associate with children, rather than adults – especially adults who are also parents.
What’s interesting about parents and fun is that often we go to a lot of time, effort and sometimes expense to give our kids ‘fun’ experiences. We organise themed birthday parties with paid entertainment, or we take them to the zoo or if we’re really feeling particularly convivial (or have completely lost our minds during the school holidays), we might even take them to an indoor play centre on a rainy day.
Whatever the case, when we get to said activity, most parents generally tend to just stand on the sidelines and observe. We watch our kids have fun without ever actually participating in it. Instead we wait to assist with the snack breaks and the toilet trips that inevitably arise. From my own experience at the roller rink, I’m usually the only adult actually joining in.
And look, I get it. As every millennial will tell you, ‘adulting’ is hard, and parenting’s even harder. Time is scarce, patience is thin, and the responsibility is real. The thing is though, fun and play aren’t just frivolous pursuits reserved only for the little people in our lives. They’re actually a pillar of wellbeing that I would argue is being lost in our results-driven, productivity-obsessed culture, and as it turns out, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
The play expert
Dr. Stuart Brown is an American psychiatrist who has done extensive research on the benefits of play throughout the human lifespan. He is the founder of the National Institute for Play in the United States and the author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul. His TED Talk ‘Play is more than just fun’ has over two million views and in it he says, “The basis of human trust is established through play signals and we begin to lose those signals, culturally and otherwise, as adults. That’s a shame. I think we’ve got a lot of learning to do.”
Brown goes on to elaborate in his book, “Of all animal species, humans are the biggest players of all… When we play, we are engaged in the purest expression of our humanity… I have found that remembering what play is about and making it part of our daily lives are probably the most important factors in being a fulfilled human being.”
According to Brown, play has the following properties:
- Purposeless – done for its own sake
- Voluntary
- Inherent attraction
- Freedom from time
- Diminished consciousness of self
Improvisational potential
Continuation desire.
You can see how roller-skating ticks a lot of those boxes, right?
The positives of play
While we’re aware of the benefits of play for kids, Brown says the benefits extend well into adulthood, as he says, “Nothing lights up the brain like play. Three-dimensional play fires up the cerebellum (the part of the brain responsible for key cognitive functions such as attention, language processing and more)… and helps contextual memory be developed.”
According to research, play is a profound biological process and has further benefits for adults that include the following:
- relieves stress
- renews our natural sense of optimism
- energises and enlivens us
- stimulates the mind and
- boosts creativity
- improves relationships and connection to others.
Brown goes on to express the importance of play in our adult lives as he says, “The opposite of play is not work, it is depression. Our inherent need for variety and challenge can be buried by an overwhelming sense of responsibility. Over the long haul, when these spice-of-life elements are missing, what is left is a dulled soul…Play is called recreation because it makes us new again, it re-creates us and our world.”
Prioritising play again
Whilst Brown agrees that as adults, we’ve become culturally conditioned into feeling guilty about play, he says the key to re-introducing play lies in our childhood memories.
“To really regain play in your life you will need to take a journey back into the past to help create avenues for play that work for you in the present. This can be achieved through a complete play history, or it can be done by simply sitting and remembering (and often visualising) something you did in the past that gave you the sense of unfettered pleasure, of time suspended, of total involvement… Remember how that made you feel? Remember and feel that emotion and hold on to it… It can be the rope that lifts you out of your play-deficient well… Remember the feeling of true play and let that be your guiding star.”
Once that has been done, Brown then advises to find activities that allow you to recreate that feeling as often as possible. Funnily enough, when I think back to my own childhood and ‘play history’, roller-skating on the veranda of our family home is one of the first things that comes to mind.
Play on
So, knowing what I now do about play, I can see the reason that ‘fun’ question bothered me so much. It was because I didn’t really do anything ‘just for fun’ at the time. I worked, I studied, and all my leisure activities were attached to some sort of self-imposed results system. How many times per week was I exercising? Was I increasing my resistance or distance? How many books was I reading per month/year?
Roller skating has given me more than something fun to do with my kids, it’s returned my sense of play, which I believe has improved my overall wellbeing. As the quote by George Bernard Shaw goes, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” So, I intend to keep playing for as long as possible. Now, if only I had a wedding to attend so I could tell a stranger all about my fun new hobby.
As seen in Swell Issue 17.
