Why is Play Essential to Creativity?
“Serious art is born from serious play.”
It is the paradox of the creative life that in order to do this work, we must play.
As an achiever, I confess - I am not very good at this. Play has become somewhat of a spiritual discipline for me. It is hard to enter into because of the purposelessness of it. There is no agenda, no aim, no outcome.
Play feels wasteful and threatening to my sense of productivity. It forces me to loosen my grip on control. But, if true creativity emerges from play, then so does our true selves. An immersion into play that sets us free to be human instead of a machine. A human that has the freedom to step off the treadmill and onto the sand and bury ourselves in the sand just for the fun of it.
Because we were made for more than just productivity. We were made to delight in the world God has created and bless Him for it. Sand blankets and all.
What is Play?
“Play is anything that makes us lose track of time and self-consciousness, creating the clearing where ideas are born.”
But I’ve learned that play is essential to creativity. When we are at play, we are operating more out of the right side of the brain where creativity awakens. Our left brain loosens up a bit (unless of course play for you is strategy games), and we have more access to our subconscious thought where new ideas are formed.
Here are a few things at the heart of play: discovery, experimentation, joy, and freedom. And my greatest teachers for these things? My children. Just spend a few minutes with some toddlers and you will encounter the heartbeat behind play.
Toddlers love to discover their environment. They are uncovering inputs from all kinds of sources into their senses and discovering how to use them. They don’t know that pencils aren’t really meant to go up your nose, or that underwear goes on your bottom, not on your head.
If we are to create, we must learn how delight again in the acts of discovery - our hands under a faucet, the feel of the outdoors, the whizz of bubbles flying around us.
Kids are impervious to the need to perform or produce. They willingly and radically approach life with reckless abandon and incredible presence in each ordinary moment.
Learning To Play
One of the most challenging invitations for me over Sabbatical was to enter into play. Because in reality, I didn’t know how.
In the midst of my restlessness and drive to get things done, my kids regularly interrupt me and invite me to attend to the present moment filled with wonder and life. They have no agenda really. They make up stories and run around giggling butt naked just because. They are on a hunt for adventure and fun and are content wherever they find it. And - they want you to join in with them.
As an achiever Mom, sometimes it feels more safe to put away the dishes in the dishwasher than immerse myself in Paw Paw patrol play or building towers with Legos.
What is play for my sons isn’t always play for me - but it is a discipline I enter into out of love. It is entering into the present moment and letting go of what came before it and what comes after it.
It’s looking into their eyes and really paying attention when they tell me that in order to save Adventure Bay, someone needs to put out the fire in the closet. And then stop what I’m doing to help put out the fire!
Recently, I sensed the Holy Spirit’s rebuke on the ways I viewed my kids as obstacles in my creative work:
“Stop viewing your children as a liability in this season - they are your greatest asset. They connect you to your humanity, your limitations, but also to your inner self - the true self and the voice that comes out amidst rest and play. Enjoy them and join the fun.”
Freedom and Snow Angels
One of my first breakthroughs in play during Sabbatical was when I took a walk to the nature trail behind our neighborhood. I sauntered down a trail to the edge of a field where I loved to come in the summer because of the waving tall grasses. But it was covered in a large expanse of untouched snow. And my invitation? To lay down in the snow and make a snow angel.
There isn’t anything more childlike - nothing that could have been more full of rest and play than laying there looking up at the sky and watching the clouds slowly drift into new shapes, pulling apart like white cotton candy by an unseen four year old with uncharacteristic patience.
It was then that I felt like my soul is awakening again with the subtle act of defiance of a snow angel. This moment defied the lie that beauty and creativity is something I can control - something I can manage.
My words to my self-consciousness in this moment, “Get out of the way. Stop trying to force things or fix things or make them be what you want them to be. Let things be what they are and become more fully themselves. Yourself included. Your intervention and striving and performing isn’t going to help anything along - it is only getting in the way.”
The true self within us is a lot like these children, longing to play. They may lead us to new possibilities beyond what we could have ever imagined. Let’s give them a turn.
When we play, we allow ourselves to be present in the moment. Our attention becomes less about a need to produce something, and more about desire and joy.
We must lose ourselves in the delight of these things. We must build and create and be willing to let it tumble. We must fill our hearts with the fanciful and with dreams because they will carry us far beyond our own limitations.
We get in our own way when we think we know enough, when what we really need to do is to allow ourselves to come to terms with the fact that we don’t know anything.
When we enter into play, we surrender what we think we know to a God who is beyond all of our knowing. He leads us unto new ventures. In play, He leads us out of the boxes of what we know works, into a risk of unknowing where He reveals more about His limitless nature. And that is where limitless possibilities emerge in our work.
