The struggle to play: a path home to ourselves
Play is hard. Particularly as an adult in a modern world. I'll be honest — I have SUCH a hard time truly playing. Really letting my hair down, my freak flag fly, practicing the 'curiosity without outcome' I mentioned before. It might seem strange to start a post about play as a pillar of aliveness this way. But I've found that investigating the struggle behind something can give us the key to the thing itself.
If you're a busy, modern adult living in our crazy world right now, I'm going to guess you can relate. Burnout, bills, world events, health struggles, family drama, survival mode. Play can feel downright frivolous — even irresponsible — in a world full of deadlines and demagogues.
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In my endless fascination with the human brain, I recently learned something that cracked this open for me. "Play" is actually a nervous system state — a blend of your fight/flight response (the energy that gets you moving) and your rest-and-digest response (the part that helps you feel safe and present). Which means if you don't feel safe, you biologically cannot play. It's not a character flaw. It's just biology.
This makes sense when you think about it: play requires uncertainty, vulnerability, risk, exploration. All things that need safety as their foundation.
Think about the last time you felt truly playful — joking with friends, lost in a creative project, enjoying a sport. What were the conditions? Chances are you were somewhere that felt safe: physically, emotionally, or both. Play, like trust, is something that has to be earned by our environment before we can give ourselves over to it.
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For me, that place is my favorite coffee shop. As a regular of four-plus years, I know the baristas, they know me, and I've made some of my closest friends there. It has become one of the few places where I consistently feel safe enough to truly come home to myself.
And when I'm there, I play. I say what I really think, share my goofy sense of humor, laugh easily. Over the summer, on a series of sunny afternoons sipping my mango black iced tea, the baristas and I came up with alter egos for each of them. I drew them all, gave them ridiculous names, and the manager laminated them for posterity. It was HILARIOUS — and it was deeply, genuinely me.
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Here's what that keeps teaching me: play doesn't have to be extravagant or happen everywhere. It just has to happen somewhere safe. And when it does, it isn't just fun — it's a homecoming. The goofy, silly, creative parts of me that go quiet when I'm just surviving get to come back out. I remember I'm still in there.
So here's my question for you, dear reader: when is the last time you truly played? And how might finding your way back to it — even in the tiniest of ways — make you feel more alive?