Playfulness

Playfulness is deeply implicated in the building of physical and emotional resources. It can involve physical action and imagination, promoting pleasurable emotions like joy, excitement, and even love. Being playful often makes one laugh, which is good for the body. It teaches the important lesson of letting go of self-importance. Being playful and letting go of a focused agenda for the simple sake of having fun with someone or a group of others is a marvelous exercise in surrendering self-consciousness.

Unfortunately there is often an age bias against playfulness that says playing is not a mature behavior, when in fact an important aspect of maturity is learning not to take oneself so seriously. It can be particularly important later in life when older adults are making transitions in their social roles. The middle years of life are spent, in large part, achieving, developing responsibility and creating a social persona. This focus often prevents one from exploring and expressing feelings that may be deemed to not fit the external social structure. When one retires there are new concerns and while the pressure to fit-in may still be present, it is now more as habit and less as external demand. This is not to say that there are no social regulations in later life. In fact, many older people living in new residential settings become very preoccupied with fitting-in.

However, discovering the joyful exchange in being playful allows one to develop healthier and less rigid interactions. Playfulness and the experience of surrender that accompanies it can create a euphoria that releases endorphins and leaves a person feeling light hearted and elevated. Finding that one can be unburdened through laughter and that one can leave the losses and regrets of the past behind, opens the possibility of discovering a new liberated self and encourages one to make peace with the past. By disengaging the controlling mind, playfulness invites spontaneity and improvisation. It transcends time and therefore makes age irrelevant, allowing one to simply be.