Play as a verb means to engage in enJOYable activities, take
part in games or sports, to compete against someone or another team, to have a
certain position or role on a team, to hit [such as to hit a ball] or to use a
piece or a card in a game, to use an instrument while performing music, as well
performing another composer’s music, act a part or a role in theatrical
productions, to act as if… this goes on and on. And I question whether everyone
finds all the above “enJOYable” going back to the first meaning.
Play as a noun is more about enJOYment, and enJOYing
activities one finds pleasurable. Of course its interpretations and variations
fill another nearly inexhaustible list.
Play has, as a result, many synonyms. I can only imagine how
confusing this must BE for someone who does NOT speak English as one’s first
language. We can well assume anyone would know that Play is considered fun and
enJOYable, but sadly this is NOT always the case.
There is a term I have often heard, Free Play. What is
that?! For me and in my little World, anymore it means letting Gracie run like
the wind sans leash. And, frankly, much as it does spend her energies, it is
oftentimes terrifying for me and for other people. EnJOYable?! Hmmmmmmm…
Play is a desired quantity. Ask most anyone would they
rather Work or Play. Like the two are mutually exclusive and never could meet
happily in that field somewhere…
I am someone who, BEcause I worked and paid into Social
Security, no longer have to work for my income. Of course, sweet deal that it
may sound and seem, the reason I have been receiving money from Social Security
for the past 10 years is BEcause I had to medically retire from teaching in
2002. People who only know me Now, or in the past several years have a hard
time registering that. They think and often have said to me, “Must BE Nice” or “I
wish I could have all that time to…” [whatever their version of Free Play] but
never has anyone immediately understood that the “Free Play” I supposedly enJOY
was paid for with my loss of health, dwindling-down capability to function in
my Life, and a few years of sheer hell where my body and I were “playing to the
death” one against the other.
Anyway, I have spent this week of my continuing Journey with
A Year With Myself www.ayearwithmyself.com examining and
pondering and marinating a bit in what PLAY really means to me NOW. It is well
and good to look back and see what once was or wasn’t, same for looking ahead,
planning, and setting intentions and goals. Yet the heart of it is Right Now
& Today. How DO I play, how much enJOYment is there in my play? More valuable to me is how much play is essential
for me to live well Today?!
You see, I’d turned Life inside out, upside down and shaken
its pockets of everything when I made that decision to stop teaching in
February of 2002. I was “throwing in the towel” on the one thing I’d done,
work-wise, that felt so right for me. The one thing I had NOT done in the 26
years of my adult working Life up until the two years I was there, teaching a
mixed-grade K-3, and then, the second year, 2nd, 3rd
& 4th. That’s the part I never tell, the part I never want to
remember. BEcause, you see, that work was, for me, sheer and utter enJOYable
PLAY.
I’m actually a bit taken aback just having written those
words. Now I see why Cigdem A. Kobu, the curator of A Year With Myself www.ayearwithmyself.com
called her remarkable program: A Year With Myself. BEcause, while I’ve
been along every step of the way in this Life of MINE, I’d never even “met”
some parts of me, never given them “airtime,” or even the tiniest smidge of
respect.
[I suppose this, too, is why I have called this blog A Year With Myself & Other Characters
http://ayearwithmyselfandothercharacters.blogspot.com/.]
In the past 29 weeks I have met more parts of Currie, more versions
of mySelf,
and many until Now unknown or at least unacknowledged transitional roles who
are, past and done or Right Now on the menu, ME.
When I said I was “in” for AYWM, I wasn’t blowing smoke up anyone’s skirt, including my own. I
was LEAPING and simply holding onto the knowledge that when I’ve leapt BEfore,
a net or wings were always there. They just wouldn’t [or could NOT] show up
until I took that leap…
Play? A vastly
defined word according to Webster and pals; still revealing itself to ME…
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