Every season brings about its own mosaic of elements working in harmony. The fall welcomes in the cooler air and the leaves transform into beautiful shades of red, oranges, and yellows. The new school years roll in. People gather and celebrate the previous seasons’ efforts. Winter tucks everyone away as the cold weather blankets our lives. We bundle up. We turn inwards. We are restored by the rest as we anxiously await the spring. Spring is the season of renewal and restoration. We awaken from the long winter days and welcome the freshness of new beginnings. And then we meet Summer. Summer is the season of aliveness. We embrace the sun filled days of joy, wonderment, disconnecting, and adventuring. Even those rainy summer days nourish the lands and provide opportunities for other meaningful connections.

Summer is the season for play. And after such a long season of not only winter but the current global challenges, we sure need this Summer. With Summer on the horizon let us find a renewed commitment to free play and finding joy. The more unstructured the better!

Somewhere between childhood and adulthood, many of us stop playing. As adults, with the competing demands of personal and professional commitments, our leisure time is usually spent “doing.” However, just as play is extremely important for childhood development, we need to play as adults too. The research on adult play is convincing. Play helps fuel creativity, imagination, and problem-solving abilities, which are extremely important for “adulting.” The research also reports that adult play relieves stress, improves brain function, boosts creativity, and mindfulness, improves relationships and connections with others, and keeps us young and energized. Now, if there was a pill you could take or a class you could attend that could do all that, people would be signing up in droves to take part. We are warned to be weary of remedies that make such promising claims yet play really is all it is cracked up to be!

Let this Summer be a precious time to refocus, rediscover and reconnect. After such a long season of stress, screens, and isolation, our children need our help learning how to play again.

This article is an excerpt from a white paper of the same title, which is available here.

Photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash.