Five Things That A Playground Can Teach Us About Relationships

This weekend, I took Katie and Leah to one of the many local parks here in Austin. The brilliant thing about our city parks are the really neat playgrounds…and on weekends, there are always a gaggle of kids enjoying the freedom of playing. As I watched, it occurred to me (with a little help from Jason) that there is a lot we can learn about relationships - and in many cases relearn - from observing how kids interact with each other.

1. Lack of judgment
Watch kids play and first thing you notice is that there is a lack of personal judgment taking place. When a new boy or girl enters the scene, they don’t fret and wonder how this fellow player is going to add to their social circle. They don’t worry if hanging around with them is going to build or kill their cred as someone cool or hip. They don’t get hung up in a bunch of the social tangles that we create everyday. The only question they have is whether they want to have fun and play.

2. Sometimes you need a buddy
While kids can go off and play by themselves, they know that the teeter-totter doesn’t work very well with just one rider. And the merry-go-round works way better when someone else helps push. Listen for the laughter on a playground and you’ll likely see a group of kids enjoying the heck out of themselves - together

3. Free to begin, free to leave
There’s no planning, no exchange of business cards, no tearful goodbyes (well, only when you have to actually leave the playground). Kids live In the moment. They’re single-mindedly focused on swinging higher, sliding faster, climbing farther. When a friend leaves, another friend may enter.

4. Sometimes you lead, sometimes you follow
Notice that there’s never one person ordering others to go push them on the swings or spin them on the merry-go-round. There’s just a mutual sense of helping. And if someone’s hogging all the fun, they get left behind pretty quickly. That built-in sense of fairness means that there’s always a fluid agreement of leadership and followership.

5. It’s all about sharing the experience
For kids, it’s the fun of being together and enjoying the companionship and fellowship of others. There’s an acknowledgement that discovery is better when you can share it with someone else.

If all of this is true, what happened? Unfortunately, we went through that crazy mixed up time called adolescence. We were bombarded by all sorts of messages about what’s cool and hip and dorky and childish. Most of us figured out that some pretty good defensive armor was necessary to survive the hallways of middle and high school. Then, as adults we never stopped to check whether these things we learned during these tough times still work. If we did, we’d recognize that they don’t.

No worries. The cool thing is that as adults, we now have the maturity and insight to come back around to the lessons we intuitively knew on the playground. So, next time you find a playground inhabited by some fun-loving kids, sit down and just observe. And think about how you can bring some of these lessons that may be locked inside of you back out into your work and life.

Any other playground lessons to share?

Find Our Own Adventure Playground

Continuing my thought process from yesterday, how’s this for adventure? WebUrbanist tips Lia Sutton and the concept of the Adventure Playground:

In short, adventure playgrounds are places where children can create and modify their own environments, rather than relying on rigid equipment that only serves a limit set of programmed purposes: “In a sense, you and I have always played in ‘adventure playgrounds.’ We created a fort in the kitchen cabinets, jumped from couch to couch across oceans; we snuck out through a hole in the fence to a new world. We climbed trees and hid in bushes. We played in the mud and the rain. We chased each other, made secret worlds …”

Yeah, the concept here applies to kids, but it’s also a rich source of ideas for us adults, too. How often do we just accept our surroundings as fixed, non-transformable environments? What if we altered our everyday areas to match our moods, needs, you name it?

If you’ll excuse me…I’m off to turn my cubicle into a fort.

Arrr, It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day Ye Scurvy Bilge Rat

Fer all ye aspiring pirates out there (and ye know who ye are), today is yer day. It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day. It’s a day to put aside all yer worries, grab ye sword, tell a merry yarn to your best mates, and make some landlubbers walk the plank (I think ye call them managers). Now, maybe ye ain’t sure if ye have what it takes to be a pirate. Arrr…it’s easy.

First, ye start by singing a right jaunty tune. Me mate Cap’n Tom Smith has written a ditty to celebrate our day called Talk Like A Pirate Day. ‘Ere’s a start to help ye along:

Yo, Ho, Yo, Ho,
It’s “Talk Like A Pirate” Day!
When laptops are benches God gave us fer wenches,
And a sail ain’t a low price ta pay!
When timbers are shivered and lillies are livered
And every last buckle is swashed,
We’ll abandon our cars for a shipfull of ARRRs
And pound back the grog till we’re sloshed! Yo ho….

Ye can sing the whole tune.

Remember…any pirate needs a good pirate name. If ye need some help (or your crew insists on calling ye Ole Blackbutt or Cap’n Chumbucket), then thar be help fer ye. Fer instance, it helped me take the fine pirate name of Dirty Harry Rackham. It even told me what this fine name means:

You’re the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean — not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

So, get off yer duff, swash yer buckle, and plunder yonder villages. Take pride in being a pirate today. Or you’ll be sent down to Davy Jones’ Locker.

Reclaiming A Different Type Of Labor Day

Tomorrow is Labor Day in the United States. It’s a day in which its relevance has changed significantly since it was first officially celebrated in 1882. It began as an industrial age idea, when the concept of work was very different from now. Back in the latter portion of the nineteenth century, folks were fighting for the very things we now take for granted like the eight-hour workday, better workplace safety regulations, and child labor laws. We need to give thanks to these individuals and their struggles; if not from them, it’s likely that we would not be able to walk our own path of soulful work.

I’d like to suggest that we re-envision Labor Day and approach it as a reflective moment that can fulfill more of it’s potential in our current age. Rather than think about labor (which honestly doesn’t have the greatest connotation), consider work as a means of releasing our own unique purpose into the world. In this way, work no longer is tied exclusively to whether it is done for economic means. It could be volunteering at a battered women’s shelter. It could be pursuing a hobby like gardening, woodworking, or painting. It could be sharing your ideas through a blog.

On Labor Day, consider what gifts you can give through your work. And don’t be afraid to play a little, too. After all - like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup - work and play are two great tastes that taste great together.

Happy Soulful Work Day!

Update 09.03.2007: Rosa Say has a great dream for what a Soulful Work day might be…
I will know that the Hawaiian value of Ho‘ohana has caught on in the world, when the way that people celebrate Labor Day dramatically changes: It no longer will be a day off, but a day that everyone wants to be at work as a statement of the joy it brings them.

Happiness At Work Is Yours Now

Alexander Kjerulf at The Chief Happiness Officer blog has published his Happy At Work manifesto at ChangeThis.com. It’s not that long, but it has some powerful reminders in it.

His philosophy is the same as mine here at WorkPlay - we decide if we are happy. We choose this every single day. The choice does not belong to our managers, our coworkers, or our customers. They don’t get to decide our happiness unless we give them the power to do so. And that’s a choice, too.

Here’s an appetizer to what you’ll find:

5: Letting others know what makes me happy or unhappy at work is my responsibility.
It’s not up to my boss, my co-workers, my employees or my workplace to experiment to read my mind and find out what it takes to make me happy at work. It’s up to me to tell them.

16: I recognize that happiness at work doesn’t come from the absence of bad things in the workplace.
All workplaces can have unpleasant people, too much work, demanding customers, stress, red tape and other idiosyncrasies and annoyances. Though we strive to minimize these, I won’t waitbe happy at work until all of these have been eliminated. If I did wait, I would never be happy.

There are 23 other messages in the manifesto. Take them and savor each one.