“The play’s the thing”

Play is the essence of life. By ‘play’ I mean a couple of different things simultaneously. First, I mean ‘play’ in the sense that moving pieces are put into play. Life itself is composed of an endless collection of moving pieces, each one constantly at play, in flux: the ebb and flow of the tide, pulled by the orbit of the moon around our endlessly spinning planet; the rock cycle, slowly eroding, sinking below the surface, melting, being pushed upward once more; the water cycle, evaporating from the sea, raining on the mountains and plains, gathering into streams, creeks, and rivers, eventually rejoining the sea; the various life cycles of birth, reproduction and death.
Everything is moving, always, even if imperceptibly. Life is a constant flow. Yet, I think that there is something in human beings that makes us yearn to make things stable, constant, un-moving. I think that this may be a misguided desire based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the world: from a short-sighted perspective, things look solid, even permanent, things like rocks, mountains, and cities. We like permanence because it gives us a feeling of security. But perhaps we could find a more true security in learning to become part of the endless flow of life.
This is all more abstract than I was hoping for, so I’ll change directions a bit, probably into more abstraction: we need play in our lives. And here by ‘play’ I mean tension. Life is composed of one force working against another in a push and pull dance. We are accustomed to fearing tension, in relationships, in our own lives. We tend to hold harmony as an ideal, not realizing that tension is often the means to harmony. Tension – the expression of different forces engaged in honest conflict with one another. The rock directs the course of the river for years; the river smoothes the surface of the rock, changes the shape of the rock, moves the rock. In human relationships, I express myself openly and honestly, you express yourself openly and honestly; the result is tension, a tension which in turn leads to a better understanding of one another. The value of play in relationships.
The same principle applies to the conflicts inherent in the individual, conflicts of beliefs, and conflicts of desires. We long for a unity of self, a oneness of purpose and being (I think that’s a large part of the appeal of Mel Gibson’s movies, like Mad Max, in which all of the protagonists' thoughts, feelings, and desires are channeled into one unified sense of purpose – revenge). Maybe we suppress parts of our selves, block out some ideas because they conflict with our image of a cohesive identity. But maybe what we need in order to find our true identities is to allow our conflicting beliefs and desires to play against one another in order to find either resolution or harmony. Play.
The second meaning that I had in mind when I first said ‘play’ is playing, as in play time, or ‘go play outside.’ It seems to me that our increasingly competitive culture is losing the value of play. And what are we without play? We are reduced to mere functionality, servitude, mechanism. Without play, we don’t have life. Without play, we don’t have creativity (or at best, we have an anemic, stifled, pragmatic version of creativity). Without play, we don’t have joy. What are we without joy?