Be an Otter not a Sea Squirt.

Importance of Play

Playing is a critical part of our lives.   In fact, the act of engaging in lighthearted, absorbing, and spontaneous play is so important that it can drastically improve the quality of our lives, change our relationships, transform our health, and help us to live a higher quality of life.

Research is starting to pour in that play is not just crucial for children’s development but it is necessary for our own adult growth and well being. On one level,  I know we all get that, but then we run into this problem: our current society does not allow or promote enough emphasis on daily play for all ages. Culturally,  play is considered a distraction (especially at work), somewhat frivolous, for children, and irrelevant to achieving goals or being successful.   If we want to get somewhere or the elusive “ahead”, our societal mentality is that only through hard work and loads of sacrifice (not to mention stress) can we make this achievement.

I’d like to call this out as bull.

Play is serious business.  Play sharpens our minds. The more we play and the more we allow the brain to make sense of itself through trial and error which encourage new neural connections(and this is very very good).  By promoting more cross brain connections we can improve our brain health drastically and even decrease the chance of Alzheimer’s.  By increasing these connections, we become effective, innovative, and powerful thinkers. Play allows us to not only think outside the box, it allows us to create a whole new playground of possibilities. Play connects us more deeply with ourselves, what it is we want and need to be our best selves.    Engaging in play connects us with our surroundings, our experience, and others.

Lessons learned from a Sea Squirt

Breaking it down biologically speaking: here is one way to look at it.

The sea squirt, a pudgy little sea creature, has a lot to teach us about what a life without play looks like.  The sea squirt, also called a sea pork, ( ha ha, seriously) spends its youth in a tadpole-ish state traveling around the the sea, exploring and developing, until it reaches maturity.   Then,  it adheres itself to a surface, like a dock, a boat, or a rock and stays there…for the rest of its life.  It performs its job, pumping water in and out and passively receives the nutrients it needs and thereby survives.  Period.

This makes sense to me because sea squirts have really small brains, very very tiny. Well, okay I’ll be accurate with the nitty gritty details.  Actually, sea squirts have no brains; they eat them when they move into adulthood.  There I said it.  They must eat their brains in order to curb the desire to play and move around and explore.    By eating the part of the brain that tells them to adventure and discover, they can move into their more sedate, passive adult role (getting a sense of where this might be leading, aren’t you?).

This works for the sea squirt,but for us,  it is not working so much.  Here is why:  we still have that part of our brain  that tells us to play, wander, feel, delight, explore(thank god we have not figured out the eating part…bleh).  So while the “adult” part of us is living with a sense of obligation and responsiblity, there is another youthful, playful, and adventurous part of us that is not being fully engaged.  And unlike the sea squirt, we know on some level, that we are out of alignment, there is a conflict within us, or  we don’t feel peaceful or joyful.

Even if we are conscious of how we live our lives, it can be surprisingly easy to live the same passive existence as the sea squirt.  We get in our groove(a.k.a. rut), become busy and stressed, and we stop questioning or worse, we stop playing.    In this way, we run the risk of becoming sea squirts.  Just existing- doing our survival thing day in and day out-getting by.  In this way, we become glued to our pragmatic and predictable way of doing things so that eventually without that familiarity we would not be able to survive.

Out of the rut and into the groove

How can we avoid the brain eating fate of the sea squirt?

We become Otters.  Otters are the Dancing with The Stars champions of the animal world.  They thrive in play and are more intelligent because of their play.  They are able to take care of their physical needs of food, shelter, and safety and still play.  The fact that they are jovial and playful points out its necessity even in the animal world where survival is in question every day.  For otters, play is integrated into all facets of how they live.

For us, “being an otter”  means taking a risk and stepping outside the societal comfort zone by making play a priority in each day. And how we each do this is entirely individual which is what I love about play.  Here are some useful questions to ask ourselves to begin playing more.

• What activity is so enjoyable and engrossing that you lose all track of time?

• What makes you feel energized, rejuvenated, and alive?

• Describe your ideal day off.

Engaging in more play  has the potential to re-frame our mindset and enrich our lives.

Live like the otter.