Why Playfulness
Is the Key to Success in the 21st-Century
After
the death of Isaac Newton — a mythic figure even in his
own lifetime — the poet Alexander Pope
wrote the following epitaph for him:
“Nature and nature’s laws lay hid in night;
God said “Let Newton be” and all was light.”
When
you read something like this about a figure of history, it becomes hard to
imagine them as mortal. Most of us don’t invent calculus or redefine optics in
our 20s. We certainly don’t walk around laying down new foundations for the
study of nature.
But
mortal they were. And as fascinating as it is to deify them, it’s perhaps just
as interesting to imagine what they may have been like in person.
We
know that Newton was both humble and arrogant. When facing the laws of nature,
he approached his work with reserved caution. When dealing with his rivals,
however, he could be petty and vindictive — not
exactly the stoic image of perfection that first comes to mind.
We
know that in spite of his great fame, he lived a mostly solitary life, not too
focused on developing his interpersonal relationships, perhaps even dying a
virgin. It makes you wonder how different the world may have been had he been
more tempted by those very normal human interests.
The
most telling thing about him, however, I think, comes from a reflection he
supposedly shared with a friend about his life right before he died:
“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to
myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and
diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell
than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
I
like this because it shows you the child in him, the one we can recognize in
our own reflection if we pay attention. But more so, I like it because, from
this human image, we can take out something for ourselves, something that I
think is becoming more relevant today.
The Evolutionary Purpose of Play
On
one end, the idea that Newton lived such a solitary life brings about a slight
sadness that I can’t immediately shake. But then, when I read his own
description of how it looked from the inside, it fades away.
The
activity of play is universal among all human cultures that have been studied.
We can define it in various ways. When the idea is brought up, each of us
imagines something slightly different, but at a core level, it’s clear that we
are all still talking about roughly the same thing.
It’s
an activity we do just to do it, at least on the surface. It’s fun and
exciting, and the fact that it doesn’t feel like it’s stressful because we’re
associating it with some future reward seems to make it more free, more honest.
Scientists,
of course, disagree a fair bit about both how to define play and what the
evolutionary purpose of it is, but without getting bogged down by the details,
our simple definition isn’t too far detached from any truth, and in terms of
purpose, it seems to be agreed that it serves to either train us physically, socially, or cognitively.
In
this sense, play is an act of learning. More specifically, it’s a low-cost way
to explore the world in order to obtain high-value advantages. To push it even
further, it’s a search for the truth of the reality that we want to effectively
inhabit as we live and as we age over time.
When
you are born into a particular cultural environment, you don’t yet have all the
tools to make sense of it. You have to do the work to figure out where the
boundaries are, what norms are accepted, and the different skills that will be
required from you as you become a member of society.
Like
Newton, as a child, you walk around picking up different pebbles and shells,
studying them, identifying their relationships to the surrounding world and to
other people, and then based on that, you start to store information that is
consistent with your experience as to guide future experiences.
The
key thing to note about play is that because it isn’t entirely purposeful, the
boundaries are blurred, which then allows you to redefine them so you can see
something new, something that provides value in a way you may not have realized
by acting out of duty.
Mixing Exploration and Exploitation
The
most obvious thing about this kind of fun is that it’s more common in children
than it is in adults. And it makes sense: By the time you are an adult, you
have mostly done the work required to figure out your surroundings.
Based
on this relationship to play, we can roughly divide life into two realms of
existence: a period dominated by exploration and a period dominated by
exploitation. You spend the first part of your life exploring, seeing, and
understanding, but once some of it has sunk to a satisfactory level, you start
to exploit the fruits growing on the foundation you have laid.
By
Newton’s analogy, after a certain period, you have picked up all the pebbles
and shells you are likely to play with, and you walk away from the ocean
content to just continue rolling those same ones over in your hands.
For
the physical lessons born out of play, this makes sense. After a certain point,
you have learned how to use your body and you don’t need to test it in
different ways throughout your life. You know how to run, and you know how to
play a sport you love, and it makes sense to just keep doing those things over
time, with nothing lost.
There
is, however, a problem when pursuing this same explore-exploit pattern in the
social and the cognitive aspects of our life. Today, the social and cognitive
aspects are far more complex than before. Our culture is evolving at a rate
which means that if you don’t keep up with it, then you no longer understand
the truth of that reality as you live in it.
In
a world that doesn’t change too fast, a brief childhood of exploration would
give you all the information you would need to deal with the various norms
around you and with the decision-making patterns that are likely to arise. But
in a culture that is increasingly networked, doubling the amount of information
produced every few years, there can no longer be a difference between the
exploration and the exploitation phase.
Newton’s
search for truth moved him from pebble to shell throughout his whole life, but
it didn’t mean that he left the old ones behind for the new ones. He gave
exploitation his due attention, while also playfully keeping an eye out for the
hidden truths in the peripheries.
Not
making room for play in modern adult life is a strategic disadvantage.
Exploration and exploitation are no longer distinct. They are continually
co-evolving as the world quickly unfolds around us.
Dealing With a Larger Terrain
Today,
culture is more complex, information is more abundant, and our collective
environment covers a greater terrain of reality.
Play
is how we map out this terrain. Traditionally, it was enough to simply spend
our childhood and some early parts of our youth having our fun, without
following the usual rules, without being too constrained by duty and routine,
to make sense of everything.
This
is no longer the case. Our environments are no longer static. They’re dynamic
in a way that means that if you don’t keep up, you’re essentially not living in
the same social and cognitive reality as those around you.
While
in the past exploration was a distinct phase from exploitation, today, they
have merged. You can no longer get away with spending the first few decades of
your life playing and then dedicating the last few to work. Play and work have
to occupy the same range.
To
many of us, the idea of play in this way is so foreign that even if all of this
makes sense, the question remains: What does play look like when you are, say,
30 or 40 or 50? And the answer is that it looks like a space of time, simply
left to be dictated by curiosity beyond what you do out of habit — that could mean anything
from taking an improv class to simply reading more.
The
pebbles and the shells Newton picked up gave us the elementary laws of nature
that we have since built our understanding of reality on. They led us to
uncover the knowledge in front of us so that we could better master our
surrounding environment.
In
the 21st-century, playfulness won’t just remain a memory of childhood. It will
be the foundation that we use to construct and validate the truths of our
ever-changing reality.
Zat Rana
https://medium.com/personal-growth/why-playfulness-is-the-key-to-success-in-the-21st-century-201a626fe18
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