Deeply Playing With An End Goal

What if we could play with such focus, that we grew?

In her book “Deep Play” Diane Ackerman discusses why play is so crucial and important in the life of beings that need to learn.

“The more an animal needs to learn in order to survive, the more it needs to play… What we call intelligence… may not be life’s pinnacle at all, but simply one mode of knowing, one we master and cherish.”

She touches as well on the moments of “in the zone” where a person comes into the present moment so intensely they in a sense become one with it.

She touches on how having fun and playing are innately childlike.

“To play is to risk: to risk is to play,”

There is immense beauty in this and something that I connect with deeply. As a child, I went to the Adirondack mountains for 2 weeks each summer to camp. One summer day I went off alone in the forest out of earshot of the buzzing motorboats and bicycle bells. I was using a stick as a sort of pole vault that whisked me through the forest. I was directly in tune with the world around me, almost to where I forgot myself.

I felt like a part of the whole.

At one moment I crouched down and as I did a bird fluttered from about a foot away. I looked to where it came from and discovered a nest with little speckled eggs. I then noticed a mushroom jutting up from the ground nearby. I was falling deeper into the micro world around me.

This was all much before my psychedelic days, it was my first experience with oneness, and it came from play.

Later in life, like I've spoken before about in the guide inside, I found a similar feeling in whitewater paddling. Shifting into the zone and becoming part of the world around me.

This intelligence or ability to drop into life experience is something so human, and so powerful. I learn here about myself, who I am, and what I can truly bring to the world.

In his article on deep play, Patrick Goold talks about another amazing character. Bernard Moitessier an example of someone that lives a totally rational existence, one where he is constantly living his “end goal”. The rational existence part is important because some argue if one is to live completely rationally, every part of your decisions must come from the same root beliefs.

As a good example used in this article, Bernard Moitessier, in a round-the-world sailing race was in the lead, just as he was supposed to make the turn toward England and inevitably win, he continued towards the horizon and not complete the race. He did this because he wasn't doing the race for any sort of fame or status, and he realized this throughout his time.

“He was not sailing for any end goal. The only reason was to sail.”

This calls to me, and I hope it calls to others. When we are deeply looking at ourselves and what we are doing, when we are depressed and down, we may consider what our end goals ultimately are.

To have fun, to enjoy life, to live with some passion and bliss. What lights you up and keeps you churning? Whatever response comes out of this will bring you to a state of “deep play” which may help guide rational decisions, which will keep you on an even keel sailing along with your personal end goal.