Lost in Play
Non-sense, Non-knowing, Non-certain
“We are creatures of habit caught up in a whirling hurricane”
I saw this at the Mosaic Rooms yesterday and it resonated with me after all my play talk with Penny Wilson (@assembleplay ) during the day.
Could play be the positive whirlwind we need to free us from being stuck in habits that prevent creativity, wonder, discovery etc? A place of non-knowing and non-certainty?
Are we settling for comfortable? Or rather, too comfortable?
Comfort is a necessity for feeling safe - but too safe is limiting. Just check out all the research on risky play.
This is why I think it's so important to feel both safe AND brave.
To have the comfort of habits but also the thrill of the whirlwind.
Maybe play is not the whirlwind - maybe it's the skill we need to navigate the whirlwind - not to control it but to become a part of it without giving up self - to be in flow.
Play allows us to make mistakes, allows us to get lost, to not end up where we thought we were going - and sometimes that is not so good - yet other times it's wonderful and filled with rich opportunities and potentials...
Life is not something we can control, this planet we are a part of does not do what we want or what we expect all the time (most of the time) - and I think play exists so that we can navigate the uncertainty - especially important as children learning to live in and with the world (Biesta) but also throughout our entire lives.
A part of my walking in the forest has also been about getting lost… of allowing myself to let go of knowing and to feel what it is like to not know…
I think we should admire children greatly, who go excitedly into the world without knowing - but finding out instead. It’s not easy, it consumes energy.
I also remember the feeling when I realised that I could not look at signposts and imagine possibilities - that learning to read suddenly meant that I knew what was written there - and I was not at all happy about that, because it couldn’t be undone. Not knowing provided a freedom to interpret the signposts as I wanted. Of course, knowing how to read signposts is very useful when wanting to get somewhere.
Penny talked about play as nonsense at the Playwork Conference earlier this week… that play does not have to make sense, especially not to the the one observing others at play. The play makes sense to the one who plays - whether or not they are aware of that sense is another thing.
So how do we create spaces where children are allowed to get lost safely? I remember a playground close to my grandmother’s house in Oakworth in West Yorkshire (made famous by the book “The Railway Children”) it wasn’t a massive playground and connecting park - but it did have the most amazing caves that were like a labyrinth and labyrinth like pathways through trees and plants and little hideaways (including a throne in one). It was perfect for hide and seek and chasing games, and imagining getting lost without feeling the scaredness of being lost, of hoping to find a new secret pathway or caveway…
(Images from Frejya Fire Sprite and Last of the Summer Pies)
The amazing thing with the space is that there were just so many possibilities within a defined space… many of those possibilities were of course my imagination… and we played in those caves (called grottos apparently) and the paths more than we did in the playground… and back then the playground I felt was amazing, because they had the human hamster wheel thing, and then also this massive long rocking horse thing that could rock so big that it sometimes felt dangerous - totally thrilling especially when we were many on it at the same time and no young children that required us to rock gently…
This implies that we need to be providing spaces that are big enough for speed and exploration, but small enough that getting lost is not a reality but the prospect of getting lost feels thrilling - this can be done through a series of small interconnected spaces - I also loved rhododendron bushes for this as a child - often adult free because of the height, and the foliage provided privacy (yet adults could still hear us and sort of see us, without us noticing - win-win situation).
Being lost is one of the categories of risky play created by Sandø and Sandseter - not the danger of getting lost for real… but that thrill of not knowing. Hide and seek and labyrinths are perfect examples of this.
So why not step into the hurricane and get lost in the swirling winds - to break those habits and routines that have always been used and allow play to show the way..?
For those of you who are able to financially support me, I am posting daily about my adventures at the moment… photos and a daily reflection film. At the moment I am in the UK - and on Sunday I will be in Athens.
Once again, I love how playful you're right it is. I'm working on writing more playfully.