Why you should keep 'playing,' even if it's not considered playing

I was reading a Kiwanis magazine from a month ago because of the title on the front cover. The cover had, “The Power of Play” and I had glanced at it before but never took much time to really read all the articles. I looked up the definition of play in the American Heritage dictionary to see how it is described. Most words have a few sentences and maybe several definitions. Play has over 14 definitions, and many of those have up to 10 different versions of how the word play can be used. The definition took up most of one column and part of a second column. 

A person can play a game, a musical instrument, cards, baseball, football, golf, and a host of other sports. About the only one that did not fit the play definitions was bowling. I never heard anyone ask, “Do you want to play a game of bowling?” You can “go bowling,” “play on our bowling team,” but never “play bowling.” Another one might be archery. You, “shoot archery,” but it is hard to find an enthusiast that wants to “play archery.” You can play, “cowboys and Indians,” and have archery be part of the game, but it is still not quite “play archery.” 

I have a shirt that I wore when I taught activities that read, “You do not quit playing because you get old, you get old because you quit playing.” Race directors know this is true because years ago the upper age category was 40 years and over. Now the minimum upper age for most races is 70 years and over, and a few races that have categories that round off at 90 years and over. It seems that more men fill those upper age categories with the exception in the age category of 40 years and 50 years. There are usually more women than men in those age group categories in the race entries. 

I wrote an article some time back that came from the comic section of the newspaper. It showed three young children running along with the caption underneath that read, “When we get older, running won’t be fun. It’ll just be exercise.” If you have observed young children on a playground, or sometimes in the house, it seems that all they do is run. Usually it is not the pace that long distance runners use, but more like a baseball player trying to beat a throw to first base. The change seems to happen around junior high school age when maturity starts to kick in, and peer pressure tells you that, “It isn’t cool to run.” Any running from now on usually has to do with participation on an athletic team like soccer, football, basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, or for the serious runner, cross country and track. My main reason for running was that I only lived two blocks from school, and for one reason or another, I was always running late. The distance was only two blocks, but it was a sprint two blocks. I think any young man will recall running “burners”, or “gassers” after football practice. Those 40 yard wind sprints are practiced in all 50 states and are a standard for any football practice drill. At the end of practice all a coach had to say was, “Line up” and every player knew what was next. Every player also knew that if the coach thought you were dogging it for the 10 repeat sprints, he was going to add on a few extra sprints. You ran the sprints hard and fast, so hopefully, all you had to do was ten. It pushes the definition of play to the limit. 

There was one statement that really caught my attention. It was made by a young player after a game when he was asked how he felt when he lost. That puts the object of play front and center. An athlete always plays to win the contest, but for every winner, there is also a loser of the game. The young boy’s response was, “I just say, ‘Great game,’ and, ‘I’m okay with it.’ If you lose, it’s still fun because you played the game.” 

I had the opportunity to be a consultant in Arizona for an Indian School. The culture for Indians is very different than what most other kids grew up believing. Even if you played volleyball on a beach, or in the backyard at a picnic, you kept score. Indians played basketball and volleyball for hours on end. When a coach asked the players, “What’s the score?” The answer was, “We don’t keep score. We just like to play.” This was a real problem for coaches that were coaching an athletic team for the school. Trying to instill the competitive spirit to win a game in the players was something coaches were not used to. The Indians played the game, but whether they won or lost was not important, playing the game was the main reason for participating. 

I have trained a number of runners to finish a marathon. This takes around 10-12 weeks of increasingly longer runs, and more total miles, as you reach for the 26.2 mile goal. I asked some of them how they felt about being able to run a marathon. The answer that I received back most frequently was, “The marathon was great, but I feel much better about the training and effort that went into the marathon.” In other words, the marathon was the candles on a cake, the cake and frosting was the most satisfaction they got from having completed the training and what it took to reach a goal. That is what play is all about. You enjoy, and have fun, playing the activity.