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As someone who spends probably far too much time pondering, I often come up with different frameworks and structures with which to view life. Sometimes I come up with one far too simplistic to have any chance of being explanatory, but it's so neat that I can't help adopting it, at least for a little bit. Who doesn't love an overly simplistic model that claims to explain the unexplainable.

It feels to me like there are three fundamental things that are important to cultivate in a happy and psychologically healthy life. Everybody must recognize the value of play, work, and love. Not just do them because they have to, but really genuinely recognize the importance of each of those three pillars in keeping a balanced and focused life.

Play is incredibly important and perhaps the most underrated of the trio. It's partly about leisure, about unwinding and connecting with others, but it is very much not about mindless entertainment or consumption. Play is a way of connecting with the environment and engaging with the world. It can be about sports and games, but it can also be skipping through the grass or mimicking the actions of a housecat. It's about having fun, and a world in which everyone knows the value of play is a world in which fun is cultivated and spread.

Work is both vital and widely disliked, and it's sad when people wish they could avoid all forms of work. It's obviously important to get paid so you can keep the lights on, but there is also great value in work for its own sake. In dedicating time and energy to a project, to bring new value into the world. To learn the limits of what you are capable of by challenging your skills, and then pushing past those limits by to grow those skills and what you are capable of. When people talk about wanting to teach young people the value of hard work I think they mean something along these lines.

Little needs to be said about the value of love. What I want to add is that I mean far more than romantic love. More than even the love you'd give to a parent or a child or even a close friend. I think that truely loving people relate to so many different facets of life all through an incredibly loving perspective. They love the birds for singing their beautiful songs, they love their fellow men and women, their brothers and sisters on this earth. Loving people are wonderful because their massive hearts help bring more love into the world, and ensure all manner of things whether human or animal feel loved too.

After coming up with these descriptions, I noticed another elegant way to categorize them. I'm sure many people have seen the meme about money, time, and energy. When you're young you have time and energy, but no money. Adults lose all of their time to work, but have plenty of money and energy in exchange. Finally, in old age you have more time and money than you know what to do with, but hardly any energy. Tragic, really. Youth is wasted on the young.

Honestly speaking this feels like a bit of a stretch, but lets see if I can distort my observation to fit this pattern. Children are the world's leading experts at play, it's what they do best. They also love graciously and without limit, to an extent that many people find it difficult to recapture when they're older. However they lack the ability to seriously work, and are limited by their attention spans and focus even when they put their minds to it.

Adults are exceptional at work, spending most of their time involved with either a job or school or hobbies; they also spend a lot of time on play. It's a different form of play than you'd see from kids, but they spend a lot of money and energy into having fun, whether it's in the form of traveling the world or getting unreasonably deep into a niche hobby. However, it feels like love does not come naturally at stage and many struggle to find and hold onto romance. True, deep love for themselves and the world is rare to find.

Finally, we have the elderly. They're still able to work, and many have nothing else except for their (usually impressive) life's work to devote their remaining time to. Love also comes naturally, whether its to doting grandchildren or their neighbourhood and community; it feels like the elderly are blessed with an abundance of love. However the sad part is that sometimes it feels like they don't play like they used to. They don't know how to fill up their copious amounts of spare time the way that kids can, and without work or love to distract them the days pass in similar monotony.

This is all probably a little bit contrived, but I like the simplicity of it. It doesn't have to be perfectly accurate either. Even this much is useful to help us reflect and come up with valuable insights. It's a reminder to find time for play, to not shun work, and to make room for love. Especially depending on the phase of life you're in; I wonder how I'll feel about these ideas as I get older. Will I ever come back to this post.

As for myself, I feel like I'm pretty good at work. Not even just my job; I'm pretty good at finding ambitious goals and then achieving them. Play is also not too hard; so many of my hobbies and especially the things I learn feel like play to me. I guess the final pillar I need to work on, true to the fact that I guess I am technically an adult, is love. Maybe if I focus on that, and solve that puzzle, then I'll be as complete as this framework suggests I will.