‘It is not enough merely to switch off the lights which play upon the main and ordinary field of interest; a new field of interest must be illuminated.’
‘It is no use saying … “I will lie down and think of nothing”’
‘It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become the lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.’
Winston Churchill, on the importance of what I would call deep play. He himself focussed on painting for this.
In this uncertain and ever-changing pandemic world, we are all finding ourselves in need of rest, yet it is “necessary but not sufficient” to sleep, to take time off, to choose other basic forms of rest. To truly feel restored, we must actively focus on rest as a skill and focus on the many forms it can and must take for us.
A recent post on Pysche: “How to rest well” cover this in more depth. As for me, today I choose to focus you on the idea of deep play, of focussing on something different.
Anything that really takes you out of your normal work and that you must focus on deeply can be “deep play”, or even “deep work” and both can be equally restorative depending on the activity and the individual. I wrote about this at more length in “Slow-motion multitasking” some three years ago.
A personal story stems from when, aged 24, I moved to the other side of the Atlantic, to Cayman, the island that would become my second soul home. However, when I arrived, in the days before the internet, I was on my own, plus working exceptionally hard in my new job.
After a few months, I began to sense a new feeling, which included symptoms such as not being able to switch my brain off at night, and even dreaming about work scenarios. New to this idea, I realised this was “stress”.
Around the same time, a new friend introduced me to his fourteen foot long Hobie Catamaran, stored right on a quiet spot of Seven Mile Beach (no, there are no such places anymore, “progress” etc). It was big enough to sail with one or two passengers, yet small enough for one person to sail. Whilst more a windsurfer than a sailor, I knew enough to sail this lovely little craft.
Quite quickly I found myself going to the beach every Saturday afternoon and launching the Hobie, taking it out to sail up and down for at least two to three hours. As I did this, I had to concentrate, with eyes ahead, one hand guiding the sail, the other the steering, creating just enough focus that nothing else could disturb my mind, with the result that all stress melted away magically.
For me, sailing a Hobie cat up and down Seven Mile Beach was the kind of “deep play” that truly afforded me the “relief, repose, refreshment” of mind and spirit that Churchill spoke of.
I encourage you to take rest seriously and find the right kind of deep play that works for you.