You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a lifetime of conversation
Plato
Having looked at the long term weather forecast, I planned to take today off work to wander the hills of Surrey one last time before the winter with some friends, occasionally (and secondarily) in search of errant golf balls.
With the clocks going back yesterday, I woke early and to a gorgeous, bright, sunny, crisp Autumn morning. Joy!
I then browsed Twitter this morning and saw posts from two friends that really had me think about the topic and value of “play” as we head into this particular winter.
So, first the two posts from my friends David Ross and Julie Drybrough, then my thoughts on the Plato quote that gave me the title for today.
The Empty
First, from David Ross:
As I write this, I sit listening randomly to his gorgeous 80s playlist, particularly loving the reminder of the pure joy of the genius of Paddy McAloon of Prefab Sprout.
David’s post also reminded me of a scene from one of my favourite “joy” movies, the brilliant John Cusack (movie rule, any movie with John Cusack is watchable), High Fidelity.
Nourish
Next on Twitter I saw Julie Drybrough posting her latest blog post. I love that Julie is writing and sharing the way she is now. I curated her last blog two weeks ago (adding a few thoughts of my own) in “Endurance“.
As a follow up to her post on Endurance, she today published “Nourish“, highlighting:
..there’s something more to consider in the space of enduring, being resilient and making our way through the darker months well…so then the question of the week for me became about how we Nourish ourselves.
In order to endure, to be resilient etc.. I figure there has to be a source of energy we can draw on… and if everyone is running around depleted, that energy source can’t reliably ( or fairly) be pulled from others – some of it has to be self-generated… which means, we have to nourish ourselves practically, emotionally, physically, in the coming months…THEN we can share our nourished selves around, so others are nourished and they can share and….on and on it will grow.
And…I’m thinking about how we do this cheaply, easily – so being nourished is not a privilege thing, it’s a Universal Access thing, a Human thing.
It is a gift to know Julie, she is a truly nourishing human. Her writing is indeed nourishing in a way that is portable and transmittable. I hope you, too, love her writing and share it onwards.
As she writes “Nourish”, she chooses not to give a list of things that nourish her, instead gently provoking us to think for ourselves (as is a gift Julie has in her work and her being!) on what makes for what nourishes us, including the theme of play and what “play” is.
An hour of play
All of this, in addition to nourishing me as I start my day, leads me to this musing:
You learn more about a person in an hour of play than in a lifetime of conversation
This summer (after today) I will have played golf five times in total, all as the guest of a friend I met through business years ago.
Most of the time my play has been “average”, once it was truly exceptional, then, the time after that, it was, well, awful, as I set a new record (so we all said!) for hitting the ball into the trees in one round of golf!
After that game, my friend noted (in his own words, these are mine) that he had learned a lot about me in terms of how I had responded to having a terrible game right after a great one. Perhaps we learn more about people in times of adversity, though perhaps we also learn a lot about them in terms of how they respond to high moments too?
To learn more about someone, go “play” with them. In this winter, that will likely be limited to being outside, so perhaps a long walk, or, if you are more active, a bike ride, a hike.
A little extension thought from this. I love “walking meetings”, having conversations while walking. Perhaps adding an element of play, perhaps of a goal beyond walking while outside, may inject an additional opportunity to learn about each other. It may be as simple as observing the autumn leaves and taking joy from that, or seeing how you all respond if the weather turns awful and you struggle back to where you can dry off.
Anyway, enough to start the day from me, thanks again to David and Julie and let us all play more to nourish us through the winter.