Unhappy? Go Outside And Play!

I’m not exactly drunk with power, being a psychiatrist. I fight with insurance companies on a daily basis, — begging for one generic brand the patient can take over one that makes them sick as a dog, and such.

I don’t pretend to have control over everything that happens inside my office. I have a basic idea of the territory that should be covered, but the reactions to what I bring up are rich and individual and creative and tell me the essence of my patients’ spirits.

But I have absolute power over what I ask folks about once they cross the threshold into my office.

After they tell me about their family, their work and the basic dimensions of their lives, I ask them:

“What do you do for kicks?”

I think it is still current slang to some. But many folks, whether from not understanding the slang, or not thinking it is a psychiatric question, they are bewildered, and usually respond with something like:

“What do you mean?”

I waste no time. “What do you do for fun?”

They often say, no matter what they came in for,”I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” or at best, something like”spending time with my family” with shrugging of the shoulders when I ask what they do when they are with their family.

The notion of play being important to adults is not original to me.

There are many.

The best are experiential.

You play something because it is fun. And to me, that means it is an experience that is its own reward. Not cutthroat competition. (I remember articles some years ago showing wives were more likely to be beaten after the Super Bowl.) I like to think of it as a “flow” experience — the kind of experience described by the American psychologist Mihály Csíkszentmihályi. The wonderful time when you are so involved in what you are doing that you don’t care who or what or where you are, so involved, you are, in the activity of the moment.

For Abraham Maslow, a moment of “self actualization” claimed by religious activities and cults but also achievable with intense secular activities.

Although I think a self-initiated activity is best, it is not unlike the experience of being catapulted into a personal reality of reading a book or watching a movie.

We live in a society where every person who earns money is being pressed by someone to be more efficient, more productive. I hear people complaining to me personally, and people complaining about me, and read complaints in social media, about life’s general pressures of politics and economics

Play is the fastest and easiest way to escape for a few minutes.

For a newer generation, it is mainly video games and apps and such.

Me, I think it might be fun to incorporate at least one other human.

It felt good in childhood.

Remember hard, because it feels good in adulthood.

Go play.