Edward Hays ~ Author, Artist & Storyteller
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Play P.S.

5/27/2015

 

Play P.S.


Dear old and new friends,

     Last week’s Haystack reflection on the necessity for play appeared the same week as a New York Times’ article by David Kohn, entitled, “Let the Kids Learn through Play.”

     Kohn wrote how sadly the practice of twenty years ago has been abandoned where those kids in preschool, kindergarten and even the first and second grades spent most of their time in play activities.

     Parents excitedly supported dropping their children’s “play time” so they could get an early start ahead of others in the race to success, and didn’t complain when educators in the earliest grades introduced teacher-led instruction in math and reading. The concept looked logical; drop wasted play time and begin real education earlier and you will have smarter children.

     “All work and no play makes Jack a wise boy,” actually has the opposite effect studies have shown, potentially slowing emotion and intellectual growth. It also appears to deaden children’s desire for learning. Kohn reveals how by the end of the fourth grade those children who had early didactic instruction (some as early as ages 4 and 5) in preschool and primary grades actually earned lower scholastic grades than those allowed to play in those same grades!

     “Stop playing around!” is a common command directed towards kids and adults engaged in immature behavior. It might be better to say to both, “Play around more!” Dr. David Whitebread of Cambridge University says of play’s importance to children, “It is essential to their development. They need to learn to persevere, and to control attention and emotions. Kids learn these things through playing.”

     A good question to ask is what do we adults learn through our play? Do you recall any key knowledge you learned in your adult play. A child learns in play how to control…and an adult in play learns to let go of controlling. The old familiar sign says it well, “Gone fishing” (or taking a nap; God is in control). As grown-up children, when we can relax and play we proclaim that everything doesn’t depend upon us, a silly messianic illusion we easily harbor.

     Stuart Brown, M.D. says, “The opposite of play is not work—it’s depression!” Studies have shown that people are happier on weekends than during the week. The reason’s oblivious—weekends are not for work time, but to goof off and play around.

     Dr. E. Hays of Nonsense University says, “For good mental health and greater enjoyment of life convert all the days of the week into days of the weekend.”

The Golden Lottery Rule

5/20/2015

 

The Golden Lottery Rule


Dear old and new friends,

     Last week’s reflection provided a map with directions how to find happiness. Today we add to those suggestions another one—take time each day to play. Yes, and regardless of your age, regardless how brief the time, it will be well worth every minute. Sadly, we associate play only with children, yet all creatures from monkeys, puppies and dolphins happily engage in playing around, including frogs, minnows, and even ants that have been observed having fun playing.

     Adults play golf, tennis, driveway basketball and numerous other games.  However, for these to be truly play they must be void of competition because that means work. People enjoy “playing” music, and if there is any competition it is with themselves striving for excellence.  When we are competitive in play we destroy its healing, healthy and soul-enriching powers. However, in our dog-eat-dog aggressive world we are prisoners from preschool through adulthood of “cutthroat” competition which society and school encouraged, and is sanctified in our professional sports as the rule of success in life.

     Replace that rule of life if you want to be happy with the Lottery rule, “If you don’t play, you can’t win!” Play is wondrous; it doesn’t require more than yourself to be amused by engaging in any activity that lacks practical or fruitful purpose. This doesn’t mean your activity won’t be creative, constructive or beneficial…such as fooling around with a new recipe, getting dirty gardening, having fun with a hobby or going for a walk with no destination.

     Playtime in life requires desire and discipline for the majority of us not in nursing homes who are too busy to be free to amuse ourselves. Desire can be rekindled in awakening your childhood lust to play which like Sleeping Beauty is only dormant, not dead. Like any exercise, you will find that once you begin finding fun again by setting aside in your busy day time to play, the easier will be repeating this entertaining discipline.

     Those who share life with a dog or cat or any living animal discover their pet is their personal trainer in animal natural playfulness by engaging with them in “playing around.” This play is usually initiated spontaneously by your pet; never be so busy as not to stop what you’re doing and have fun with them. We lack space here for me to expound on it, but play and prayer are like two sides of the same coin. Trust me, when you are having fun so is your soul.

    
Playfulness in the midst of the humdrumness of the day is responding to difficult situations with the natural humor of amusement instead of grim seriousness. If we define dull in the ancient adage, “All work and no play, makes Jack or Jill dull,” it means glum, tedious, uninteresting, dreary and lifeless! Who desires anyone with those qualities as a friend or someone to invite to a party? That old adage is eternal truth about being loved and desirable.

     Remember the famous Golden Rule of the Lottery of Life: “If you don’t play, you can’t win.”

Happy____________. (fill in the blank)

5/13/2015

 

Happy____________. (fill in the blank)


Dear old and new friends,
     
     “Happy” is our favorite wish extended for birthdays, New Year’s and other holidays.    To wish happiness to another is not an insignificant wish since studies show that happy people live longer and are healthier than those who are not. Happy people bounce back quickly from setbacks and failures. Happy people are the most attractive. While exercise is touted as the best medicine, from medical research its Siamese twin is being happy. If you filled in the empty blank in the title of this reflection with your own name, would you expect any surprise in your life?

     Unfortunately those greeting cards wishing you happiness do not contain a package of it or a map with directions where to find it. In fairy tales, after many struggles, the young man and woman are married, with their story ending, “And they lived happily ever after.” That is the unspoken wish at every marriage, even if never expressed. In real life today unlike in the fairy tales, close to 50% of those married are not happy ever after, and often the marriage ends in divorce. Unknown is the actual figure of how many of those who remained married their whole lives do live happily ever after.

     While I did not see the presentation I understand that last year PBS premiered a documentary entitled “Happy.” It featured interviews with people across the world and with scientists engaged in this happiness research who asked people what they wanted to be happy. If those research-scientists came to your door, how would you respond to their question, “What do you want to be happy?”

     However their global research of that documentary revealed what wise men and women down through for the ages have proposed, if you’re interested in living happily ever after just follow this ancient secret map.

Picture


This map should be included with every birthday card since the ancient secret of happiness is in doing things for others!

A Daily Cocktail

5/6/2015

 

A Daily Cocktail


Dear old and new friends,

     Humanity has a long historical tradition of criticizing and denouncing new advances that threaten established customs and practices. New things such as the discovery of the alphabet frightened the famous Socrates, who said, “It will create forgetfulness in the learner’s souls.” That dread of the written word was very real at that time when learning was primarily memorization. New inventions cause alarm and often appear as ugly as did the typewriter, of which Mark Twain said as he gave away his first and only one, “I found that it was degrading my character.”

     Seven days before the Wright brothers were the first to fly a powered heavier-than-air ship in 1903, an editorial in the New York Times read, “Time and money spent in airship experiments are wasted!” Countless early detractors of television declared, “No good will come from it.” In our times, Jonathan Franzen, writing in the British Guardian, said that Googling on an iPhone is “handing over your basic memory function to a global corporation system of control.”

     Especially the young among us in these early years of the new 21st century have grown accustomed to the ever-newness of our electronic gadgets. Not only have we grown accustomed, we expect each year that their creators outdo themselves in new versions of their products. The new designs in automobiles, architecture and clothing styles are considered common and never threateningly abnormal.

     However, in our traditional America newness is a cousin to rebellion. Would not the establishment of a new, easy-to-sing-by-all national anthem, or a fresh new design of our American flag and a major reform of our voting laws so to prevent billionaires and gigantic corporations from influencing congress be rejected by Americans as repulsively revolting? Would not our elective congress be more efficient if those serving were limited to only two terms and if citizens could vote by iPhone or their home computer? Only harebrained radicals would even think of tinkering with what is sacred!

     Likewise, in religion newness is heresy! Ridiculous would be any attempt by churches to mandate the use of new versions of the Our Father and Hail Mary prayers that were translated from the original Greek into English. Such a “new” Hail Mary would begin “Hail, favorite one,” instead of, “Hail Mary, full of grace.” A grand canyon of implications exists between “full of grace” and “favorite one.” Or take the typical worship service where each Sunday only the scripture readings, songs and sermon are new or different. Wouldn’t it be seem more feasible for readers, musicians and especially the minister if each Sunday’s worship was a repeat of the previous service?

     Politics, religion and our daily lives seem to call for a daily cocktail of something new and something refreshingly old. Different is each person’s taste for the new and their tolerance of the old. Since the seasoned aged is reassuring and comfortable, always keep something old in your daily life. The 125% proof intoxicating brew of the new is required to enliven you and the old, so by trial and error mix your own cocktail.


    Edward Hays


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    Haysian haphazard thoughts on the
    invisible and visible mysteries of life.

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