Fantasy is something we do by ourselves. Play, however, is an activity we engage in with others.

As adults living in a sexualized Western civilization, we fantasize often, but how long has it been since you played?

Let’s take a look at benefits of adult play.

— Play is inherently open and accepting.  Although there are consequences that flow from one’s actions, all of the players feel free to express themselves, to be vulnerable, because forgiveness permeates play. “I was just pretending” is a standard retort that every child in history has understood and used when engaged in play.

— Play tends to be open-ended.  The world of play is often a timeless realm, as anyone who has ever been caught up in play and lost track of time knows. “Playgrounds” are often safe havens, independent of the “real world.” A “playground” is not something someone owns or possesses but, rather, a pretend setting that people temporarily share.

— Play is transcendent. Play takes place in a temporal and spatial dimension but is often experienced as timeless and spaceless. The experience itself is “pretense,” giving it a transcendent quality. It has both a worldly and an otherworldly feel to it.

— Play develops empathy. The play environment is the classroom by which we learn to be empathic with our fellow human beings. It is where we exercise our imagination by placing ourselves in other personas, roles, and contexts and try to feel, think and behave as we believe they would. When little girls and boys play house or pretend to be mommy, daddy, or older sibling, or their teacher at school or President of the United States, they are practicing empathic extension. It’s difficult to imagine how empathy could develop without play.

— Play develops abstract thought. When a child imagines what it might be like to be riding on a horse, he might take hold of a piece of wood, put it in between his legs, and yelp and gallop down the street. The wood becomes an imaginary symbol of the horse and a way for the child to create a simulation of the experience and ride it out.

— Play and freedom share common ground. True play is always entered into voluntarily. One can’t be forced to play. Human beings can never be really free until we are able to fully enter into play. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre syas, “As man apprehends himself as free and wishes to use his freedom…then his activity is to play.”

What makes play such a powerful socializing tool, then, is that it is the means by which imagination is unleashed. We become explorers of the vast other—all of the infinite possible realms of existence that could be. We become connected.

Frederich Schiller says, “Man plays only when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is fully a human being only when he plays.”

Play, therefore,  is better than fantasy and far from a trivial pursuit. It is where we stretch our empathic consciousness and learn to become truly human.

Question: What was your favorite play as a child? 

If this playful post was fun, please take time to “play” a moment in Facebook, Twitter or Google + and  share it with your playmates by clicking one of the buttons below. Thanks.

This post is a close paraphrase of pages 92-96 from the powerful book I am currently reading, The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin.