At some point, we all stopped playing. Some will disagree and say “I never got old, I stayed young and I still play”. But that’s not necessarily true. We were children once, jealously eyeing playgrounds as we passed them by in cars. Every playground was a new adventure, either when we’d play on it for the 100th time or the first. New playgrounds were special, a different maze of slides, tunnels, precarious stairs, and monkey bars.
But there was a point when playgrounds lost our interest. Our growing bodies and brains looked for adventure elsewhere. We eventually overlooked the brightly painted poles and new mulch as we passed them by. There was a day when we went to a playground as a child for the last time and we didn’t even know it.
I take my children to playgrounds as often as I can. Some days when we have time we’ll drive around town and go to several. Playgrounds are free, always available, good exercise for childrens’ brains and bodies. But often when I take my kids, we are the only ones. I don’t understand why people don’t take their kids more often. In our modern world of videos and games, the screen has taken precedence over the swing set.
It’s the same for us as adults. When we were teens and even in college, many of us played sports or had active hobbies. As we got older, got bogged down with life, jobs, family; again we found it easier to turn to a screen than to find a physical outlet.
This is not to say some of us don’t ‘play’. I feel fortunate to have found a physical hobby, and motivate myself for exercise. I also know many adults who have a game night, or activity groups. And those with children find time to play with them, build with Legos and crafts.
But there is a difference between a child’s mind and an adult’s. It becomes obvious just watching children jump and run on the playground no matter how complex or simple the grounds. As the old saying goes: we were born knowing how to play.
This year, I’ve signed up for every physical challenge that was put in front of me. I needed distraction from my personal life; from the great weight of change that suddenly fell on me. My challenges were distractions, and as I worked out, ran my races, fought my battles, I often saw people having fun the same way I saw my children playing on the playground.
And I didn’t understand. There were people dressed up for competitions, gold outfits and wigs. People on the muddy O course stopping to have picnics and smiling for selfies. People less concerned with winning, but more concerned with the art and aesthetics of my fringe sport. I saw those people as wasting their time and money, not taking their efforts seriously. Why is everyone so excited about these events? Why do they dress up? Act silly, seem excited to be running? Am I taking it too serious? Why isn’t it fun for me? Or is it a type of ‘fun’ I haven’t defined yet?
I’ve had to take hard looks at myself in the mirror. Asking myself who I am, what I want, and where I want to go from here.
My intention after my recent 5 week ordeal of races and competitions was to chronicle what happened in order. I was writing in between each event, but now that they are over, and I’ve had time to reflect, chronology isn’t as important.
It wasn’t fun for me, dear reader. This year, the things I’ve done, I wasn’t playing. They were distractions, the alternative to drinking. Everything had a serious cloud over it, everything from workouts to eating and gear. The goal was never to win anything, the goal was to finish, to push myself to my limits, to punish myself. Drinking is a form of escape, and I’ve been told before when I drink heavily, I’m taking my anger out on the drinking and in turn I’m hurting myself. That’s how I approached exercising: taking my anger out on it, and in turn punishing myself.
Again, my goal was never to win, it was to find my end, find my limits. My training and conditioning was so I would not find the limits of my body, because if I wanted that I would have not trained and failed outright. My goal is to find the limits of my mind.
I’ve come to the conclusion I am an adrenaline junkie, always have been, always testing my mental limits. Maybe not in the extreme sense like someone who jumps out of planes or does flips on motorcycles. My interests have always had to do with endurance. I used to stay up late to watch the sun rise and then go to school. My record is 88 hours straight on nothing but caffeine and nicotine. That's 8 hours short of 4 days. I used to ride a motorcycle. 100 miles an hour at night on the toll road from Round Rock to San Marcos dodging the wild hogs in the dark. I’ve always been a marathon drinker. I have stories about all my friends passing out and/or puking, but they have no such stories about me, because I knew how to pace myself.
When I found out about my daughter’s heart, and my father passed away, I tried to disguise my pain. I ran, worked out, started racing to escape. But when reality stole one form of escape, I turned to another. It was a deep hole to dig out from, but eventually I started to see the top.
That’s when the hole collapsed again, and I found myself spit out in a new dim valley. So I started running again, conditioning, fighting. A dim spark inside me grew hotter and hotter. I found an outlet, an alternative to drinking, but all the while, I knew it was just another form of escape.
But that’s what playing is in the end. An escape, a fantasy, to make us feel happy or distracted. It’s easy for children to find their fantasy on the playground, in an open field, or in the sand of a beach. For those of us weighed down with life, it’s harder to find our playground.
And so dear reader, find your playground, either in your mind or at a place. It is important to still play. The challenges I’ve put myself through, I don’t regret not enjoying. Moving forward I will still tell you the things I’ve seen and felt, but my advice for you: make your challenges fun…you will be better for it.
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