A thousand ways of doing right and a million ways of doing wrong

The theory

Another email comment about my post on feelings said that they'd have liked to see something about play on it. My take on that is that play isn't just about feelings, it's more like a way of going through the wheel of life. For me, play means that you go about it flexibly, not always watching the same things, thinking the same thoughts, feeling the same feelings, making the same choices and doing the same deeds. It's deliberately introducing some playful randomness in the spin of the wheel.
When I was a child, my parents tried to instill in me a strong sense of right and wrong, and on the importance of doing the right thing. Then I got as a Christmas present a book on prehistoric life and evolution. For me, that was the strongest proof you could ever imagine that there isn't such a thing as the one right thing. The book said that all life you see around you, from oak trees to sparrows to butterflies to mould, evolved from the same root. Clearly, there isn't the one right way of living. There are millions of forms of life that are quite good at living their lives. And each of those forms of life separated from each other at some point: they were the same species at the beginning, but there was one change (called mutation), and since then, they have gone their separate ways.

On the other hand, the book said also that most mutations are harmful. Most of the time, a mutated living being is worse at staying alive than their parents, and is stillborn or dies young. Most innovations don't work well at all.

I thought the same principles surely applied to a human life. There isn't one right way of doing things, there are many opportunities to try something different, and many of those paths will be perfectly good. But even more of those paths will be dead alleys that aren't a good idea at all. That's when I thought my motto would be: "There are a thousand ways of doing right and a million ways of doing wrong."

Being playful is nothing but knowing this, maybe by instinct. Just because you have found one right way, it doesn't mean it's the best, there may be better ones. Keep trying and you may find them. But most of the time, being playful will mean that you fall flat on your face. If you can take it cheerfully and heal quickly, like the youngsters of every animal, you'll be fine.

The practice

Experiment 1

Watch a kitten, a puppy or a baby playing. How often they are doing something very silly? How often they risk hurting themselves? How often you notice that they've learned something they didn't know before?

Experiment 2

This is a classic from the sixties. You can do it on your own, but it's more fun if you do it with somebody else or in a group. Take an old piece of clothing that you don't intend to use any more. How many different things can you try doing with it? Anything goes, from trying silly ways of wearing it (can knickers become chic hats?) to tearing it to rags and finding new uses for it (you never know if you'll ever have to improvise a rope to escape from a tower...)

If you haven't discovered something new about clothes by the end of the experiment, you aren't really putting your heart in it.