Do you remember a time when you were doing something playful, that really engaged you? Was it when you were a kid? teen? adult? Was it a one-time occurrence or did it happen over a period of time? Were you playing alone or perhaps you were in a group? Did it involve an object of some kind? Was your play purposeful or purposeless? How do you feel right now when you think about it?
To celebrate Day #4 in my thirty one days of joy challenge I’m asking myself, and anyone who would like to join me, to share their remembrance of that playful time with at least one other person and extra points if you ask the person you are sharing it with the same question as above.
When I was a kid I loved to read. This was solitary play generally. I still have three of the books I loved. I read them over and over. I read them so much I thought they were my books, and one of them was, but it is possible I adopted them from my parent’s book collection.
Today, these three books sit on a bookshelf between so many nicely bound books. The first book is entitled, A Child’s Book of Famous Stories selected and edited by Penrhyn W. Coussens with pictures by Jessie Wilcox Smith it is held together by yellow and green tape as is the second book. Its title is Grimm’s Fairy Tales selected and illustrated by Elenore Abbott. The third has a red spine which is no longer attached to the pages within and is called Danny Kaye’s Around the World Story Book. I like that the pages are worn, yellow, folded. I like the stains and the two pages I practiced writing the name Jacquie. Why Jacquie? Because I thought it was a beautiful name.
I’ve the read the stories many times often seeing something new in them I hadn’t seen before. This is one of the things I loved, played with, and still play with today. I feel joyful when I see those books even when the thought of reading one of the stories bores me to tears!
Play can be a door to joy and creative voices and leaders often place a high value on play.
Have some fun and share that playful story!
– Mary
PS. I’ve been writing these pages off-the-cuff on a daily basis and plan to do the same for the entire month of the challenge. So you may find some typos — do you want to know what I think about typos? Why I celebrate them of course!
