Living Well
Play
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
A short piece with a pointed argument. Doug contrasts genuine play — children outdoors, unsupervised, inventing the rules as they go — with the organized and prefabricated versions that have replaced it. Drawing on Rutger Bregman’s Humankind: A Hopeful History, he asks whether curiosity and imagination can develop when everything arrives with assembly instructions, and arrives at an unexpected defense of boredom.
A Note on the Original Text
Doug’s writings are presented as originally written. Spelling, punctuation, and grammatical irregularities have been retained to preserve his words and the integrity of the original record.
ORIGINAL WRITING
The content in this post is based on the book Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman.
Play is not subject to fixed rules and regulations, but is open-ended and unfettered. It’s not an Astroturfed field with parents shouting at the sidelines; it’s frolicking outside without parental supervision, making up their own games as they go along.
When kids engage in this kind of play, they think for themselves. They take risks and color outside the lines, and in the process train their minds and motivation. Unstructured is nature’s remedy against boredom. These days we give kids all kinds of manufactured entertainment, from LEGO Star Wars Snowspeeder, complete with detailed assembly instructions, to Miele Kitchen Gourmet Deluxe with electronic cooking sounds.
The question is, if everything comes prefabricated, can we still cultivate our own curiosity and powers of imagination? Boredom may be the wellspring of creativity. ‘You can’t teach creativity,’ writes psychologist Peter Gray, ‘all you can do is let it blossom.’