Conversations For Transformation:
Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
Conversations For Transformation
Essays By Laurence Platt
Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard
And More
I Am Therefore I Play
Diamond Mountain Appellation,
Napa Valley,
California, USA
April 4, 2010
"Life is a game.
In order to have a game, something has to be more important than
something else.
If what already is, is more important than what isn't, the game
is over.
So life is a game in which what isn't is more important than
what is.
Let the good times roll."
...
When I attended high school through seventh grade (or as it was known
in
South Africa,
"standard five"), a buzzer sounded during class to indicate the
start of recess (which we called "break"). Class time was for
work. Break was play time. From eighth grade
through twelfth grade (which we called "standard ten" or
"matric" for matriculation), a bell replaced the buzzer. But the signal
was the same: class time ie work was over (at least temporarily) and we
were permitted to play. No one ever worked during break.
And certainly no one ever played during class. At least,
we weren't supposed to. If we did, we were reprimanded or
punished.
Being at high school and of an impressionable age, the enduring lesson
I learned was there's Life which is ongoing all the time,
and within Life there's work, and after you've got your work done, only
then is there time to play. Within Life there's also play, but play has
no place during work, and must stop when work restarts. The lesson was
very, very clear: in Life, work and play are separate ie in Life, work
and play don't mix.
It took me the better part of the next decade to unlearn that lesson.
Actually, to tell the truth, that lesson ingrained itself in me so
deeply that every now and then I'll still find myself bound up by its
arbitrariness. As soon as I catch myself being run by it again, I'll
unlearn it all over again. That's when I notice in the space
which opens up when I unlearn "in Life, work and play don't mix", an
entirely new possibility becomes available. This possibility is the
possibility of Being playful.
That's Being with a capital "B". To be present to this
possibility of Being playful, you have to distinguish playing as
being who you really
are
(which is a transformed view of
who you really are),
from playing as not working (which is an arbitrary
standard, blindly accepted without
rigor
a long, long time ago). In other words, the possibility of Being
playful is invented by distinguishing playing as
who you're being,
instead of playing as something you do when you're not
working.
Engaging in this inquiry, I had a
breakthrough
after which my life was never the same again. This is what I saw: since
Being playful is a function of
who I really am,
in other words since Being playful is accessible simply by
being
who I really am,
then there's a possibility, a
clearing
for Being playful to be the context for all my actions and
all my activities including work all the time.
When I got that, I immediately stopped working. I'll never work another
day in my life ever again. It's all play. This, by the way
in all honesty, isn't an original idea of mine. It's all play
now ... but it always was all play. I just
hadn't distinguished it until then, so I hadn't seen it - even though
it's always been available like a possibility.
Be careful. Not working doesn't mean not being financially
responsible. Not working doesn't mean not paying the rent and the
electricity bill. Neither for that matter does not working only become
possible when you've saved up enough
money
to retire.
Do artists retire?
No of course
artists don't retire.
Neither would you retire if you live Being playful. Neither would you
retire if you live your life as an expression of art. Neither would you
retire if you live your life as if your life depends on it. If
you're living powerfully and you're living a life you love, you
wouldn't want to retire. That's why
artists don't retire.
Clearly in this distinction, not working doesn't mean being idle. Some
of my favorite people who don't work anymore ie the people I know who
only play all the time are
paradoxicallythe hardest working people I know.
Indeed, let the good times roll! Let the good times roll
indeed.