Not that long ago, I went to Disneyland with my family. The idea was simple: go to an amusement park to have fun.1
After getting the (pricey) tickets, I started thinking that if we were going to do this, we had to do it “right.” I needed to do it efficiently, so I began strategizing how to ride all the rides we wanted. Once there, plan in hand, I dragged my family from one side of the park to the other. We rushed, we stressed out, we did it. I “won” at Disneyland.
But in winning, I missed the experience. I executed the plan successfully, yet it wasn’t fun.
That’s what striving does. It turns even an amusement park into a to-do list. It turns an experience into a chore. It turns life into labor. Based on what I see in my therapy practice, I’m not alone.
Do you ever feel like life is too much? Too many things to do. Not enough time. Too many messages to respond to. Too many crises. Too many ways to “improve ourselves.” Sometimes life can feel like a never-ending, grim self-improvement project.
So, what is the point?
Maybe deep down you’ve asked yourself that question. What if all our efforts amount to nothing? Or, as Shakespeare would put it, what if life is a “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”? What if Camus is right and life is truly absurd?
These can feel like depressing (if not downright dangerous) questions. But could it be another way?
I want to suggest an alternative: Play hard… but don’t take yourself too seriously.
Of course, suggesting that life is “play” can sound dismissive or naïve. Am I saying that life amounts to nothing? Work is not only necessary but often edifying. And what about suffering, does “play” make it meaningless?
No, I am not saying that. I am saying that we often make our efforts carry a weight they cannot carry. Let’s unpack it.
A different way: Līlā
Hindu thought offers an intriguing idea: life as God’s līlā, a creative expression of divine play. This whole universe, us included, is God’s playground. Another way to say it is that God2 is the sacred dancer, and we are the dance. The Divine is exploring possibilities, unfolding experience, and becoming intimate with its own creation through us.
From this perspective, life isn’t ultimately about achieving. It’s about participating.
Why life feels like work
Life feels like work partly because it’s designed to feel that way. There are layers of complexity that make the game both engaging and challenging.
We are biologically wired for survival. Since the advent of agriculture, life became future-oriented: plant, harvest, store, repeat. Modern economics suggests there is no room for freeloaders. We must be productive and add value. Psychology suggests that as children, we learn early on that we need to be “good boys and girls” and follow rules to be loved. And even religion, narrowly understood, can make life feel like there is something to achieve: Heaven, mokṣha, Nirvana…
What’s worse is that when we fail to perform, it can start to feel like there is something wrong with us. The stakes feel very high. No wonder it feels like there’s no room to play.
So, play hard… but don’t take yourself too seriously? Sounds like madness, unless we learn to see reality differently.
Two metaphors
Not everything we do in life is work, and not everything has a purpose.
Think about dancing or listening to music. Why do we listen to music? Why do we dance? Certainly not to win. If that were the case, the fastest musician would be the best, which is obviously absurd. The point is the experience itself.
Or what if life is less like a chore and more like going to the movies? Again, we don’t go to movies to win. We go to get lost in the story, to learn, to enjoy ourselves. We willingly enter the narrative while still knowing that it isn’t real. We don’t take it that seriously.
What about suffering?
Remember, we already established that this game of life is designed to feel like work. What about suffering and hardship? It has been suggested that part of suffering’s role is to “thicken the plot.”
Think about it. Would you want to watch a movie where nothing happens at all? A dancer who just stands there? A piece of monotone music? No. We appreciate a skillful dancer. We value a sophisticated piece of music, even if both are, in a utilitarian sense, “pointless.” We value the effort and time it takes to achieve excellence. Likewise, we love intricate movies. We pay to watch tragedies, thrillers, horror films, the kind that make our hearts race or bring us to tears.
The difference is that with music, dancing, and movies, we can remember it is not that serious and still enjoy the experience. In life, we get so engrossed in the action that we forget to witness it. We become method actors in our own drama.
Now, if life is play, are there any rules? Of course there are, although it is a bit of a stretch to call them “rules.” I’ll address that in a future article.
Movies, music, and dancing
We’ve seen that the game is wired to be challenging. All those layers may be designed to make us get lost in the storyline. We’ve also suggested that suffering thickens the plot, perhaps as the cleverest subterfuge to trap us in the narrative. However, please don’t read this as me (or the Hindu tradition) trivializing suffering.
We must be careful not to minimize another person’s pain. If one of my clients is suffering and I were to suggest that their misery is not real, I’d deserve to be punched in the face. Saying something like that would be spiritual bypassing and insensitive. When someone is suffering, we don’t philosophize. We meet them where they are. We honor their pain and support them in any way we can.
The Buddhists often say that pain is unavoidable, but suffering is optional. One way they explain this is through the Two Truths: relative and absolute.
At the relative or conventional level, harm is real, wounds hurt, and consequences are real. At the ultimate or absolute level (līlā), we can sometimes observe existence more like the audience of a movie. Suffering, and everything else, becomes plot. Whatever happens makes the story more engaging, but ultimately it is still a story.
The challenge is to hold both realities simultaneously: to fully engage conventional reality (like a football player engages a game) while not losing the perspective that, in the end, it’s still only a game (even if it happens to be the Super Bowl).
I’ve witnessed people touch this realization in psychedelic ceremonies. Often, they start laughing as if someone has told them a very funny joke. They report seeing the folly in their striving. I call this the cosmic laughter.
Pain does not invalidate the idea of life as play. It can block our access to it. Trauma contracts the body, and when the nervous system is bracing, play feels unsafe. With time and perspective, we sometimes see how our greatest battles and deepest wounds brought growth and change, just like the misfortune at the beginning of a movie becoming the call to adventure that pushes the story forward.
Building castles in the sand
It is possible to play hard while not taking ourselves too seriously. Let me borrow a powerful image from Nietzsche.
Imagine children building sandcastles at the beach. Picture them deeply engrossed in their work, making them taller, digging ditches… and then splash! A wave comes by and knocks it all down. The children both cheer and whine. They knew all along it was bound to happen. In fact, perhaps knowing it made everything more poignant.
What do they do next? Without missing a beat, they begin building another castle, fully aware it won’t last.
From a practical perspective, what they are doing is crazy. What is the point? Yet the ephemeral nature of the task does not keep them from giving themselves fully to it. Just like dancing. Just like listening to music. Just like watching a movie. Maybe, just like life, it is the experience that matters.
So next time you catch yourself worrying, striving, racing… remember those kids at the beach. How can you turn your efforts into play? Your struggle into a dance?
Play hard, but don’t take yourself too seriously.
Get it?
- This is a written version of the first session of “The Unfolding,” a CSP’s monthly offering. For more information visit https://sacredpractices.org/ ↩︎
- Please feel free to replace the word for Goddess or Mystery, the one that resonates best with you. ↩︎