At work, on a good day, I am playing, under a big sky.
Play.
That lovely undervalued thing that apparently happens when work stops, or when work doesn’t feel like work, when you are engaged and enjoy it. The flow state.
We value our social lives, our family lives, our hobbies, in essence our play time away from our work time. What is different in the values we bring to our work? I’ve a hunch that any work can be play with a shift in attitude. I’m suspicious that the values in play might just provoke and contribute in ways that we need right now in the industrial societies of the twenty-first century.
I have 3 commitments. They’re getting better with practice:
to strive for the greater common good
to get outside
to inhabit a playful, creative state
I am curious about the myriad ways we play, or not.
I am curious about the difference being outdoors makes.
What do we learn and find when we reflect on this?
I’m interested in the transformative power of our environments; what happens when we really take notice of where we are and what’s happening.
I favour the collaborative, expressive act, when people get together and make something they didn’t expect.
Finally, I value reflective practice, which seems like the shadow side of the modern activity cycle; something lesser spotted and rare. The soft underbelly of incessant exponential growth. The human being as opposed to the human doing. Perhaps it’s increasing in value because of it’s scarcity, the need to consider both cause and effect.
