Play, Fleetingness and Attention
I find a lot of meaning in play, and because of this I’ve been fascinated by what play is and it means to me. So when I recently took a day wandering around the nearby forest I couldn’t help but wonder and re-explore my thoughts on these topics.
Fleetingness of life
To me life is incredibly fleeting and everchanging, nothing ever is the same as it was before. What we call a tree one day becomes a house becomes a ruin becomes a nest and… Our imagination/subconscious might be one of the most fleeting of all, the moment I try to grasp it, it escapes like a fleeing flock of birds. When a conscious thought appears it is only a smidge of what’s actually flying around in my head. And, when I try to hold it tight, it inevitably finds it way to slip out of my hand…
Play
Play, to me, is giving one’s attention to this master of fleetness, this priest of change, the subconscious imaginative mind. Watching children play pretend, I can’t help but notice the ways one thing flows into the next seemingly without any second thought. The moment one is forced to stand still, reconsider their subconscious playfulness, play is thrown out the mind’s window. Only when the the imagination is given free rein is play at it’s best. Therefore, play is the relishing in the reality of the everchanging.
I think games act like a guide to giving attention to this subconscious. It is scary, the fleeting, the playfulness. We, most adults, maybe out of need or maybe out of whatever society is, learn to keep things as they are. Fear is looking away from reality, holding tight to what we have. By doing so we are trying to swim upstream, as reality can not help itself but change. Games give a kind of permission to play in a controlled environment. They tell the player they are free to let their imagination go, but not too far. You could say that we train ourselves to enjoy this everchanging reality in games.
Attention
When saying “attention to the subconscious” I had to ask myself what I believe attention actually is. Anything I’ve ever experienced and any person I’ve met I carry in me. The way I think, talk, act is all because of the cumulation my experiences (possibly in combination with traits I was born with). This may be the Self. Attention, to me, is the conscious allowing something to become part of that Self. Choice and conscience are tricky subjects, but possibly: without attention there is no personal choice in the forming of the self.
Should we choose to play? Then we allow the everchanging subconscious (imagionation) to become part of the self. And, in this everchanging reality this might be the closest we get to feel the (sidenote: I experience a lot of meaning in play because, I think, of this) . It’s a way of letting go. Holding things not in a closed fist, but an open hand. Not owning but admiring.
PS: Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist asking questions like this, but damn if it isn’t fun! Looking forward to revisiting these ideas sometime, as they are everchanging ;P
Some of the inspiration for these thoughts are:
- Lost & Found by Kathryn Schulz (one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read, I think everyone should give it a chance)
- The Ezra Klein Show - Why Does My Mind Keep Thinking That?
20250805 addition
A poem by Margaret Atwood I heard on Hwat Weekly ep 40
There is only one of everything (English)
Not a tree but the tree we saw,
it will never exist, split by the wind and bending
down like that again. What will push out of the earth
later, making it summer, will not be
grass, leaves, repetition, there will
have to be other words. When my
eyes close language vanishes. The cat
with the divided face, half black half orange
nests in my scruffy fur coat, I drink tea,
fingers curved around the cup, impossible
to duplicate these flavours. The table
and freak plates glow softly, consuming themselves,
I look out at you and you occur
in this winter kitchen, random as trees or sentences,
entering me, fading like them, in time you will disappear
but the way you dance by yourself
on the tile floor to a worn song, flat and mournful,
so delighted, spoon waved in one hand,
wisps of roughened hair sticking up from your head,
it’s your surprisedbody, pleasure I like. I can even
say it, though only once and it won’t
last: I want this. I want
this.