Work at Play or Play at Work

Holidays are very important to me. Being able to have lots of them is one of the main reasons I have my own business. I have been employed by an organization full time, just twice. Both times, just about the worst thing was having to ask permission to take days off. Its the one thing that I think I share with GenXers - the notion that holidays are a right.

On a recent holiday I did have cause to consider an aspect of holidays that seem to be very important, that is the idea of having fun - of playing. It seems like we have holidays so that we can escape from work and do what we call play. Work is the necessary thing and play is the enjoyable thing.

Well on this particular two day holiday, my husband, 12 year old daughter and I went skiing. The first day, at Sunshine. Sunshine brags about the amount of snow that it has, guaranteeing knee deep powder. I have never really thought about why they named the mountain "Sunshine" before but since 4 days out of last 5 visits were almost total whiteouts, I think it is to create an irrational but positive view of the ski experience there. Our last day was a typical "Sunshine" experience. Wind, snow, and cold that made us shiver and cover our bodies, including our faces with as many layers as possible. We huddled on the lift, tripped in the drifts of snow, and generally felt like Arctic explorers on some of the runs.

It must be remembered that I am 54 years old, my husband is 58 and we are skiing with a highly competitive risk taker whose only desire is to whizz at great speed down every run. Stopping to rest down an arduous run, with the wind cutting my face, and watching a lot of other skiers over bundled like myself, a question occurred to me. Is this fun? It must be or at the very least we all must have an incredible sense of hope that it will be fun. You could argue that when we all bought our $60 tickets for $5.00 off in Calgary that we didn't really know what the conditions WOULD be. We did however know what they COULD be and we still made the choice to go.

The second day at Lake Louise, the weather was much better. Lake Louise has more snow this year than they have had for years. It was only cold some of the time which only meant that we skied like crazy people. Run after run after run until my legs were screaming and I again considered the question. Was this fun or was it just some kind of mild to mad torture? Was this play? If we had more money, more time - were less committed to work and church would we actually choose to do this more?

Okay change the thought. What about work? There are times when work is by far more fun than skiing. When I am with a group, teaching something, considering some difficult problem and I am on a roll..... coming up with ideas, stories, examples - making them think, laugh, feel deeply....That is fun like no other thing that I experience. It feels so much like "play". I have a book called "Flow:The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikzentmihaly(I defy you to pronounce the author's name)that talks about the nature of the experience rather than labelling it as play or work. It is about finding joy in what we do. Cool.

I never saw my parents have much fun. They relaxed at night watching TV but the certainly didn't play when I was growing up. I was surprised when my father played the harmonica once. I didn't know he knew how. I was amazed when he came swimming once in Radium (on the one holiday I ever remember taking) and he did a cannonball and just about emptied the pool. I was also fascinated with the idea of my mother doing elocution and playing basketball when she was young. Those pastimes were just as it says, in the past time. We played Rook a bit as a family but other than that the "fun" or "play" was pretty individual.

Most of what I considered fun or play had to do with sports. I curled in junior high. I skated on ponds and at the outdoor rink in the winter. Tobogganing on the river hills was kind of like the skiing experience - more like survival. Baseball was huge in school in both elementary and junior high. Training for the track meet was also something that I spent hours and hours doing.

Swimming in irrigation ditches was standard summer fun. My brother Herb taught me how to dog paddle when I was five and considering that only the canal was deep and the current so swift that all you had to do was float with the current pushing you until it was shallow, it was amazing that I learned to swim at all. The smaller ditches had moss covered "drop-boxes" that were like slides, whipping you down into sandy bottomed, though shallow whirlpools.

Waterton picnics brought the opportunity to swim in a heavenly pool with crystal clear, warm, water. And of course the tallest slide on the playground ever. My Dad would push me on the swings sometimes - grabbing my legs when I got really high. Those were the days of ridiculously tall swings where you could be pushed higher than children can even dream of now. The swings had boards for seats so you could stand up and pump to go really high by yourself. There were also giant merry-go-rounds and really big teeter totters.

Sometimes when I am skiing or doing some other sport that now seems to hurt more than please my body, I wonder if I should train more. Perhaps it is just that my body is not up to the challenge as it was. Maybe if I "worked" harder, I could lose myself in the fun of sport again. Perhaps it is just "play" that needs to be relearned. Maybe I have forgotten how. That relearning sounds too much like "work" again doesn't it. On the other hand maybe it is something that is just gone - a something from a past time no long a pastime. Maybe there shouldn't be the distinctions between work and play at all. Maybe it is just about joy and there are no boundaries or definitions that make any sense. In that case I can stop thinking about it and go to bed. Goodnight.