Facing the Challenge of Play
This July I attended the South, Central, and West Asian and North African Liberation Workshop. On Saturday afternoon we took time for play.
I have not been about play [been interested in play] since I was eight years old. Up to then, play was easy, with one pal or another. We would let go and permit anything and everything to happen. I would be present and relaxed.
Free play disappeared from my life when sports entered in. Then everything was about rules and doing things right. I was not skilled at sports, but if I put in time and practiced, I could manage okay and keep the other boys from being harsh in my direction. Society had given me an assignment and shown me the consequences if I shirked it. I set to [embarked on] the task and became competent at sports.
On occasion I felt exhilaration, but that was a matter of success—either my own or, especially, my team’s. Play was now competition and dead serious [completely serious].
At the workshop we played a game from India, a version of chase. We were eleven people, including two men: Bishu and me. I seemed unable to learn the rules. And it appeared to me that Bishu, too, had trouble learning them.
A panic set in [developed] in me, and perhaps in Bishu too. The game meant competition, and the stakes were high. As males we were on the spot [under pressure]. We had better acquire skill, and fast. Oh—one more thing (which I’d learned in adulthood): we had better not be overbearing.
Meanwhile, Bishu and I did not know what we were doing. I, at least, could not think. I went through the motions and was pulled to appear skilled—and also nonchalant about it all (“cool”).
It felt as if things would go wrong, and more wrong, the longer we failed to understand the rules. So we did speak up, in some moments anyhow, about not knowing what we were doing. We swallowed our pride and asked. But all the while I felt that we were not catching on [understanding] and could not catch on. How could we, if we could not think?
I can’t say I was having fun.
Yet some contradiction [to distress] was available. I got hints that play need not be a matter of life-or-death seriousness. No one disgraced me or banished me from the game, or Bishu either. The females who were playing seemed engaged and in the moment—an inspiration that this was possible.
As I continue to try to play—rather, as I continue to play—I’ll regain my young pre-sports self. It’s all toward my re-emergence.
Meanwhile, fun awaits.
Falmouth, Maine, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion list for leaders
of South, Central, and West Asian-heritage people