By Chloe Davies
It’s the perfect day to be reading a magazine.
I’m seated at a local cafe in the west. We’re at the tail end of winter and it’s raining outside.
I’m reading a feature from Harper’s BAZAAR magazine titled ‘Play School’. It’s a piece about the benefits of incorporating more child-like activities into our ‘always-on, endlessly productive and commodified lives’.
Play is a relatively simple concept that comes naturally to us in our younger years yet many of us, particularly in the west, find this increasingly difficult to practise in our older ones.
The writer, Julia Baird begins:
‘As someone who pushes themselves relatively hard most of the time, who is careful with time and money and mothering, my resolutions must always be reminders of fun, of the need to insist on lightness. This year I’ve landed on margaritas and frolicking, which is something I’ve realised I do not do enough of. The dictionary tells us that frolicking means to ‘play and move in a cheerful and lively way’. Something that kids are very good at.’
As I’m halfway through this piece, a mother and her young son – maybe five or six years old – sit down next to me. The boy takes out a drawing from his pocket and marvels at the green scribble splayed unevenly over the page.
The woman orders a serving of scrambled eggs for both of them. The young boy asks for a hot chocolate but is told they will get one when they leave. But the child wants his drink now.
The woman pauses and explains that the reason for ordering hot chocolate later is because they will take it on the train with them to the city, and that hot chocolate doesn’t really go with scrambled eggs anyway.
The child cares not for this reasoning and insists on having his hot chocolate with breakfast.
I return to my magazine, Baird points out:
‘When I recently heard there was such a thing as a play coach for adults, I wondered if this was a sign of the end times. Is this something we really need to be told how to do like kindergarteners? Something we need to outsource to strangers?’
The child next to me calls out in agitation.
After a short and considered pause, the woman lowers and deepens her voice in a way that only a parent can and leans in his direction. I’m quite literally seated right next to them and all I hear is the word “questions” and then the child falls silent.
“People are trying to enjoy their breakfast”.
As she says this she glances in my direction, flashing half a smile. I catch her eye and immediately feel a sense of warmth and empathy towards her.
“He’s fine”, I say. “He’s very cute”.
And I mean it.
Kids can be messy, demanding, frustrating, moody and unpredictable.
I’m a school teacher and have witnessed this spectrum of emotions many times over.
And still, I think kids are magic in human form.
They are often our best mirrors for revealing where we are out of alignment with joy and play; where we are not yet at peace with others’ judgments of us or with ‘uncomfortable’ emotions like sadness and anger, particularly the uncensored and explosive kind.
In this day and age especially, adults have a lot to learn from children.
She seems immediately relieved by my compliment and smiles in agreement.
“It’s the last day of school holidays. I’m kind of at the end of my tether”, she admits.
I explain that I am a teacher and enjoying the last few child-free days before the term resumes and we share a laugh about this.
She asks if I teach primary or secondary?
It turns out she works for a publishing company that creates textbooks I use at work. She spoke of rewarding work, long hours and endless deadlines.
Baird notes: There are myriad of benefits for incorporating child-like activities into our always-on, endlessly commodified lives, including decreased stress and improved relationships.
Rather than returning on-site as most workplaces have done, at-least in part, the woman tells me her company is now operating entirely online.
“It’s too reminiscent of lockdown”, she laments.
“If I had a better split between work and home life, it might be easier to manage. I’m in a small apartment on my own. Having to work full time and attend a constant stream of meetings whilst having him around all day is really hard. I don’t really get a lot of time to myself”.
It was at this point that I was struck by a few things: the universality of this message; that I had had this conversation about work/life balance with many people, the vulnerability in which she shared this message and that she had told me this; a complete stranger.
What she had articulated is the reality for so many. Though we may have the desire for more joy and play in our lives, at one point or another, the daily grind gets the better of us.
Play, I’ve decided, is as necessary as it is elusive. It’s the kind of thing that will pass us by unless we choose to prioritise it, like every other ‘important’ thing on our ever-expanding to-do lists.
As I turn back to my magazine the boy spills his glass of water all over their table.
I am toward the end of Baird’s piece now and she asks: When was the last time you played?
She concludes:
‘We need to drop our quest to be perennially productive and our guilt for allowing some time to get nowhere, achieve nothing and just be. But play isn’t entirely without purpose. It can clear the fog of rumination. And paying close attention to one thing can help us see another better.’
At this point, the boy playfully takes out a green mask that he had coloured in himself, puts it on, turns in my direction and proudly declares that he had made it at Kinder.
I realise that he too is sharing something personal with me.
As they get up to leave, the young boy waves goodbye to me. It’s now bucketing down outside. Just as they are just about to exit the woman reaches into her bag with one hand, holding her son’s hand with the other. The young boy is frolicking in a small puddle just outside the café. The woman takes out an umbrella and before she has a chance to undo it, she is yanked forward by her eager son.
They begin to run and disappear from view.
