Imagination will often carry us to worlds that
never were. But without it we go nowhere.
CARL SAGAN
THE CREATIVE ARTS AS WE know them today likely stemmed from the early impulse to tinker. The purely pragmatic eventually made room for the artistic. Although we tend to think of our pre-Neolithic ancestors as living a life stuck in the dirt with no sense of refinement, we’re far off course in that assumption. Artistry is indeed an anthropological indicator of modern behavior, but evidence of these inclinations date back tens of thousands of years before the Agricultural Revolution. As early as one hundred thousand years ago, our Paleolithic ancestors were creative, artistic, and inventive.7 They painted caves and made jewelry from shells and bone fragments.
Wouldn’t you know it, that natural impetus lingers to this day with practical—and sometimes dramatic—results for our physiological wellbeing. Far from being mere childish distraction, creativity and imagination are crucial to the development of advanced cognition, problem solving, and social empathy.8 Imagination arms us through the tumult of adolescence, the disorientation of life’s griefs, and all the ordinary dilemmas of everyday living. Yet, it also spurs us forward—toward higher goals and down more risky, but ultimately rewarding, paths. Its power allows the relief of momentary displacement and is a catalyst for long-term transition.
Specific instructions for an unstructured activity are impossible (and counterproductive), but there is a basic guideline: anything goes. Discover your own particular brand of play. Let it take many forms. For most of us, we’ll naturally gravitate toward something we enjoy and excel at. If you tend to lean toward the cerebral, the next chapter on adrenaline pursuits is for you. But if you already push the envelope on outdoor pursuits, try finding pleasure in simply reading or painting. The point is, play is meant to add some balance to the predominant elements of your daily routine.
Let’s start with your workday, where you probably spend the most time. When I talk about sharpening your spear (Habit #9), this isn’t just about addressing your work ethic. It means your creative ethic as well. It means becoming a well-rounded person. Yet many of us have, by necessity in the modern economy, become specialists, concentrating our focus on a single star rather than the galaxy it occupies.
When it comes to the more mundane tasks, there is, indeed, hidden value in taking out the garbage, doing the dishes, chopping vegetables, fixing a loose board on your deck, even spending thirty minutes on the production line if you’re the CEO. Pursue the highest expression of your talents by all means, but if your role is highly specialized, stressful, complex, or abstract, look around and see where you can pull back and then broaden your horizons.
One often doesn’t apply the prevailing definition of play to growing a tomato, building a chair, or painting a fence. But anyone who has spent significant time creating with their hands—whether it be painting, carpentry, knitting, carving, or building— can appreciate the distinctive satisfaction it evokes. (Again, another hardwired response.) Picture our hunter-gatherer ancestors sewing clothes from animal sinew, forming vessels, or weaving baskets. They created paints and dyes. They chiseled spearheads from stone so brittle few of us can even imagine the deftness required. They meticulously whittled shafts to create efficient, aerodynamic spears. (Eat your heart out, Neanderthal!) They designed vast stretches of nuanced cave art.
As anthropologists suggest, human proclivities toward craft and artistry increased the odds of survival for individuals and their communities. A skilled spearmaker added obvious value. Yet those who could design jewelry or other adornment introduced “material metaphors” and “social technologies” that enhanced relationships and community identity as well as expanded the terms of inter-band negotiation.9
Bear in mind that handicraft, as wide a spectrum as it can encompass, isn’t about routine chores or fix-its. There’s a difference between grudgingly doing your own home repairs to save money and savoring the experience of meticulously renovating your master bathroom. It’s about being a good steward, yes. It’s also about the love of the craft. Artisans, hobbyists, and do-it-yourselfers are drawn to what they do on a subconscious level. They develop a reverence for the craft and even a relationship with the tools they use. Picking up a familiar tool feels comfortable, even calming. The balance of its weight in your hand feels sure. Sometimes the tools can become more personal than the items we build or create. The brush or needles, chisel or knife, spade or hammer become an unconscious extension of the self. The mind devises, but the hand itself thinks, designs, knows. In its fullness, we lose ourselves in the full physical experience of craft—in the sensory nuances, in the emotional associations, in the intuitive energy. I’d venture to say that we’re the happier and healthier for these endeavors. It’s in the craft that you find focus—or even flow.
A recent study conducted by the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at the University of California, Davis highlighted “the link between traditional artistic practices and mental and physical health.”10 Although examining such an association with the methods of standard research isn’t a simple or clear-cut task, interviews suggested that traditional handicraft bears positive impact on measures like interconnected mindbody awareness, spiritual and emotional growth, physical vigor, strengthening of personal and community identity, and therapeutic distraction from illness.
Of course, the fine arts—sculpting, painting, music, poetry—or cerebral pursuits such as reading and playing crossword puzzles, brainteasers, or chess all constitute play as well. As the saying goes, just do it.
Use your imagination. Play, for all intents and purposes, is our continuing experiment in self-development. It gives us the opportunity to try on varying abilities, techniques, differences, even alternative lives—like children donning dress-up clothes. It paves the way for the rush and stretch of discovery—the revelations of our own possibilities, of the reality and depths of others, of the beautiful and confounding complexity of our world. Play finally brings us full circle, suggesting a life richly lived isn’t a linear path but a spiraling journey that leads us forward and yet brings us time and again through familiar, ongoing patterns.
So, who do you want to be? Maybe a storyteller or a writer? A painter or a dancer? A master chef or a scientist? Your imagination allows all of these sorts of opportunities to develop and helps you zero in on what might be a special passion. Write a list of ten things that intrigue you, things you want to explore and know more about. Include dream jobs on your list. And include a couple of long shots. Astronaut? Go ahead, write it down. Now commit yourself to doing something an astronaut might do, even if it is just looking out over the night sky or perusing the science section at your local bookstore. In the process, you may discover another hidden passion. You want to be a writer? Join a poetry slam or enroll in a writers’ workshop. Or maybe you enjoy food, and you’re already a pretty good cook. Raise the bar and challenge yourself to whip up something new and different from a foreign land. Or create a new recipe, maybe several, take pictures of them, and put them all in your very own cookbook. Remember, this is play, which means there’s no failure—only fun, and learning what works and what doesn’t. It also means reduced levels of stress hormones and enhanced immune function, life satisfaction, and self-esteem.
Pick up a tool. Build a simple latticed shelter over your existing deck to eventually populate with vines or canvas; do some decorative tiling in your shower or bathroom counter; repaint your bedroom in some lively colors. As with art, home repair shouldn’t be the private domain of licensed contractors. Pick up a tool and you lose yourself in its sensory nuances and intuitive energy. No wonder dinnertime comes and goes when you are in building mode! For more ideas, go to a big-box home-supply store and check out the ongoing series of free classes on assorted home improvement projects. YouTube videos are also great resources to give you sufficient guidance to do a simple project safely and successfully.
“Far from being mere childish distraction, creativity and imagination is crucial to the development of advanced cognition, problem solving, and social empathy.”
Listen to music. Most of us have experienced the transformative effects of music. Whether a true evolutionary adaptation or a deeply embedded and heritable product of culture, music was—and remains—a profound contributor to our human story. Infants exhibit musical abilities that suggest a penchant for music is coded into our genes. The human voice was undoubtedly the first instrument, dating back at least sixty thousand years, while the oldest flute dates back thirty-five thousand years.11 Evidence suggests that music strengthens social bonds through its role in ritual and celebration, and was likely involved in hunting, language acquisition, and even sexual selection for musical talent.12 What’s more, it moderates the stress hormones cortisol and epinephrine, lowers blood pressure and heart rate, and elevates growth hormone levels.13 It’s also proven to enhance the way you process language, verbal memory, and emotion.
Learn to play an instrument. Then there’s the experience of making music yourself. According to Norman Weinberger, professor of neurobiology and behavior at University of California, Irvine, playing an instrument works several regions of the brain simultaneously and calls on a number of senses, including vision, hearing, touch, motor planning, emotion, and symbol interpretation.14 According to Weinberger, this complex level of engagement could explain the ability of those with Alzheimer’s who have retained the ability to create music when many other prominent memory functions are compromised.
Watch people. Head to a high-traffic public place such as an airport, train station, busy coffee shop, or high-rise office complex. Pack a lunch and enjoy the ever-changing scenery. What kind of game can you make of it? Guess their conversations? Their thoughts? Their occupations? Maybe even summarize their life stories?
Break for play. Can you bring a little of the Google workplace ethos into your work environment? Heed the recommendations to take regular cognitive breaks throughout the workday, and make them as playful as possible. Have ongoing, high-stakes challenges for excellence in Nerf basketball, turf putting, paper airplanes, freestyle rapping, one-legged stairwell ascending, or caricature doodling for display in the break room’s Wall of Fame. If you have a lengthy commute, how about stopping off at that park playground once in a while? Take a spin through the jungle gym challenges, complete a par course, shoot a few baskets, or toss a few snowballs at your favorite targets before returning to the road.
Witness the wonder. Pay special attention when you expose someone—a child or an adult—to something awesome for the very first time. It could be acting as a tour guide for a visiting friend and seeing your hometown in a fresh, new way. Or taking a grandchild to a familiar place, made brand new again through their wonder. Or simply teaching a child to fly a kite or ride a wave. Absorbing that unmistakable look in a person’s eyes, when they are filled with awe and satisfaction, can elicit a similar impact on you.
More ways to play. Take an art class, enroll in a comedy improv class, go to a play, spend the evening in a comedy club, read a book, solve a crossword puzzle, join a chess club. You get the idea. It’s a big world out there. Go play!