Playtime

We do not stop playing because we grow old.
We grow old because we stop playing. - Anon.

Besides my impatience in waiting to play with some of the new features offered by Blogger in Beta, my goal with this blog re-design was to make the site more conversational - to tie together a community of blogs and comments. So to start things off, I'm branching off of a friend's blog.

Sure, at a certain age, our bodies get too old for certain activities, but somehow, I don't think we were made to stop playing in some fashion. - Hanski

And she certainly has a point.

When do we reach an age where we are too important for play? And perhaps more importantly, why does the thought possess us that we're too old to play anymore? I believe it must occur around the same time that we lose all of our youthful bravado and confidence in ourselves. So, for most of us, middle school. We are suddenly caught up in trying to fit into someone else's mold of coolness or perfection, and we let go of anything that stands in the way of our fitting in. There's an element of depression to it, as we cast aside parts of ourselves, parts we loved and valued, and feel embarrassed that we ever loved them. It kills the spirit.

And with that our sense of fun, our love of play is gone. Sometimes forgotten. We can look back and wax nostalgic about the joys of our childhood. We can deny that which we find embarassing (I used to own Barbies, for example, don't die of shock).

Or perhaps we can latch back into our playful side - and start having fun again. We can start up regular games of ultimate frizbee. We can indulge our imagination with books that are far below our reading level, but have the kind of innocent creativity lacking in most adult fiction. We can spend as much time as possible playing with children - inspire our inner child. We can try hard not to squash the imaginative fun of future generations.

Or we can shamelessly watch old episodes of the Muppet Show - it still makes me giggle. Yes, I giggle.