Socialize like it will all come crashing down

Play is connection without expectation, a self-rolling wheel.

Becoming an adult means many relationships easily fall into catch-ups: “Do you like your new manager… that new restaurant…the new apartment?” It is rehashing of our separate lives; an important piece of nurturing the bond, of course, yet a passive one.

Active bonding requires creating memories: net new experiences together. From the clashing of psyches in a round of Secret Hitler to the physical dramas of spike ball, engaging in play sparks a unique form of connection, it is bonding from dynamic creation.

We may not be able to play minigolf all the time, but seeing every opportunity to socialize as an opportunity to play — through a running joke, a soft jab, a moment of pretend — opens a window to connection without expectation. It becomes an additive step in the relationship rather than an iterative one. Just recently, the New York Times wrote: “the strongest bonds come less from existing similarly and more from riffing playfully. In these moments, people create a little world that belongs just to them…building a shared reality”.

Not only is play co-creation, it is an exercise in neuroplasticity, testing the flexibility and quickness needed to respond to spontaneous stimuli. Nietzsche talks of the final spiritual transformation of the soul: “Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea.” The child represents the freedom of play, its affirmation of life, and the creation of new values unbound by neither norms nor norm-rejection. Verbal play is the first push in a self rolling wheel.

Socializing can be cerebral — you can run the calculations and weigh the merits of each chess move — or it can be a happily futile game of Jenga. Good banter, banter that flows seamlessly, is a melding of minds — one brain saying to another through the narrow confines of spoken language — I understand you, so that I can add to you. Let me extract a block and place it upon yours, so delicately balanced, and then you will do the same, piling on top of one another so that eventually we have created something much taller than the initial stack, yet imperfect and pointless all the while.

Maybe not pointless; after all, our tower has never been grander, we have learned more about how the pieces fit together, we have delighted in the motions of moving toward a conclusion we all saw coming. Above all, the beauty of play is being unmarried to the result.

In the suspension of utility of playful socialization — of knowing the Jenga tower will eventually fall — we become looser. “It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative..it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self,” psychologist Donald Winnicott pinpoints the role of authenticity as a critical reason play is so important for relationships. A good bit, in its unassuming bid for a better understanding of each others’ true self, adds new tendons to the muscle of the relationship.

It says “this will all come crashing down, and wasn’t it such fun?”