Purpose and Play Walk into a Bar

Play is a topic close to my heart.

I learned some great lessons on the subject from my father who was, among other things, an itinerant play pig.?Not to the exclusion of his responsibilities.?Just the opposite.?I think he saw enjoying himself – and taking his family along for the ride – as a responsibility.

Sometimes taking us along for the ride was interpreted literally.?For instance, he rented a sailboat on one of our family vacations to Maine’s Little Deer Isle.?The boat was a small daysailer, a red-hulled number just large enough to fit all we kiddos, Mom, and Captain Dad.

Eventually, long after that vacation, he learned to sail…

And yes, we did end up pinned to the rocks that day, in need of rescue by a guy in a small outboard.?It was instructive.?Fodder for great stories, too.

On the professional side, I saw Dad step away from the leadership of an organization he’d been instrumental in building for decades.?The company had been bought several times by a series of larger and larger businesses.?The ongoing shifts in culture, to say nothing of increased demands on my father to travel greater distances and spend more time away from home were slowly chiseling away the enjoyment level.

Work was ceasing to be fun.?With no signs of improvement on the horizon, Al stepped into semi-retirement at 55.

I never discussed purpose with my father.?Not in any explicit way, that is. ?When he retired, though, he was clear that his decision was driven by two strong desires: to do his own thing, and to bring fun back into the work equation.

I’m freely extrapolating from the available data.?My working hypothesis is that, whether he would call the thing that drove him “purpose”, Al was committed to play.?If he was going to work, any acceptable gig had to be meaningful and feed his inner play piggy.

If you know me, you know this apple didn’t fall far from that tree.

We’re almost halfway through this year’s IAM Mastery course, and we’re spending this lap around the Sun digging into the topic of play.

At the same time, I’ve been plunging into purpose.?I’ve been reexamining my own, fishing for clearer, more useful language to describe what I, and my work, are about.

Not long ago it hit me that, rather than play and purpose being separate tracks, they are rails heading in the same direction, and I’m on a single train that needs both those rails to get anywhere.

While it might fly in the face of puritanical precepts concerning work – for which I never cared much – some very cool stuff happens when purpose and play walk into a bar, share a few drams and, a couple sheets into the wind, discover they’re long lost fraternal twins.

I’m not positing this to suggest purpose isn’t a serious thing.?I think it’s vitally important – well worth figuring out and finding language for.

At the same time, I think we do a mighty disservice to ourselves, our children, our educational institutions, and our workplaces when we relegate play to after-hours, weekends, vacation time, and “only after you finish your homework.”

Why?

To paraphrase the good folks Down Under at “Build a Better Brain,” play lowers cortisol levels, raises dopamine levels, integrates different parts of the brain, helps us learn, solve problems, and a whole lot of other good stuff.

This isn’t to say that we, as responsible, conscious adults, should no longer tolerate serious moments or eschew facing things we perceive as less than fun.?That would be silly at best, dangerous at worst.

What I am suggesting is that when folks begin doing their own purpose work, (or revisit their purpose) they pay as much attention to what unlocks joy as they do those things that provide keys to meaning.?I also encourage unboxing play and giving it room to expand, to see it in fresh ways.?Adult play doesn’t only happen on golf courses, racquet sport courts, card or board game tables, at parties or, for that matter, in bedrooms.

Nothing wrong with any of that, but I’m of the opinion that most of us miss the abundance of purposeful, playful opportunities that surround us, just waiting to be engaged with.

And yeah, you might bump into a few rocks.?Like my dad and his sailing, I think it’ll work out – and make for some great stories.

Let me know what you discover!