“Monday 5 Things” ….. Just Play …..
December 08, 2025 by D. Paul Graham
Ever curious and always amused by the quirks of life, join D. Paul Graham each Monday for more M5T pondering.
Peter Pan & Captain Hook, Photo by D. Paul Graham, Serenbe Playhouse, circa 2018
Lately I’ve found myself thinking of Peter Pan. That unruly ambassador of joy who refused to grow up, not out of stubbornness, but out of loyalty to wonder itself. He understood something essential. Play isn’t frivolous. Play is the lifeblood of a soul that wants to, in fact needs to, stay awake to possibility.
Spend any time observing a child and you’ll see it immediately. Kids don’t need permission to feel joy. They don’t schedule delight or negotiate with imagination. Magic simply shows up for them. A stick becomes a sword. A shadow becomes a companion. A cardboard box becomes anything the mind dares it to be. Their world is not limited by what things are but is expanded by what things could become.
Somewhere along the path to adulthood, we began trading these natures for what Saint-Exupéry called “matters of consequence.” We exchange wonder for worry. Spontaneity for structure. Play for productivity. And yet, despite all our seriousness, the childlike spark never fully disappears. It lingers, for some of us deeper than others, ready to reawaken the moment we give it space.
Peter Pan said that the moment you doubt you can fly, you will forever cease to do so. I think his comment was less about flight and more about mindset. It is the quiet, powerful belief that imagination is a form of freedom, and that curiosity is the fuel.
As this year accelerates toward its end and we get caught up in the rush of Christmas, it’s worth remembering the mindset of a child. One that plays hard because the world is fascinating. One that explores simply for the joy of discovering through curiosity. One that doesn’t wait for permission to be delighted. One that honors the child within. One that instinctively knows life is richer when approached with wonder.
This morning’s M5T is a reminder that life expands when we reclaim that childlike mindset of being and allow ourselves to play hard and play often.
1. PLAY IS NOT A LUXURY. It’s fuel. Play shouldn’t be optional. It’s the energy that keeps your spirit charged and your mind awake to possibility. Even five minutes of play can shift an entire day. You’ve felt it. That moment when something makes you laugh harder than you planned, and suddenly the weight you’ve been carrying loses half its mass. Play isn’t an escape from life. It’s where life catches its breath. Without it, everything gets too tight, too serious, too adult. With play, even responsibility feels lighter, more alive.
2. PLAY WITH INTENSITY. Play stirs the part of you that remembers how to feel. There’s a particular kind of joy that only reveals itself when you push boundaries. It’s that intensity that gives yourself permission to go all-in, whether it’s a pickup game, a spirited drive on backroads, or a workout that leaves your shirt glued to your back. That intensity isn’t about bravado. It's about waking up the parts of you that get sleepy from routines. It's your spirit saying, “Oh, there you are. I was wondering when you’d be back.” Play hard and something inside you quietly ignites and the world around you comes into sharper focus.
3. PLAY OFTEN. Who knew that joy works exactly like exercise. Frequency beats rarity. Consistency outperforms the occasional grand epic moments. We don’t need a monthly trip to Monaco (although with full disclosure, your scribe could easily learn to play in Monaco, but he digresses). We need small repeatable doses of delight woven into our ordinary days. A song that lifts your mood at just the right moment. A small adventure that lasts forty minutes but serves as a reset. A walk around the block at golden hour just to see what the light is doing. A hobby that makes you grin like a kid even though you’re a full-grown adult with spreadsheets. A spirited drive in your favorite car, just to hear the engine clear its throat. Play often enough and life starts feeling less like a to-do list and more like a rhythm that you want to dance to. Play often enough, intentionally and consistently, and life stops resembling a to-do list and becomes a rhythm you want to dance to.
4. PLAY WITH CURIOSITY, NOT PERFORMANCE. As a kid, when you wanted to do something, you rarely asked, “am I good at this?” You just did it, wildly, joyfully, and gloriously unconcerned. That’s the kind of play that lets the soul stretch its legs and breathe deeper than it has in years. Curiosity-led play has that inner voice that whispers to you, “let’s just see what happens.” Suddenly your world feels bigger, friendlier, and more open to you. It’s experimenting without the burden of mastery. It’s permission to try something simply because it sparks a flash of interest. It’s picking up a camera and shooting whatever catches your eye, not for a gallery, not for social media, but for the thrill of noticing. It’s taking a different route home just to see what’s around that bend. It’s trying something you’ve never done before with zero concern of talent or failure and simply for the delight of learning something new. When play stops being a performance and becomes an experiment, you reclaim the mischievous, barefoot version of yourself. The person who loved breaking patterns and rules, who wasn’t afraid of messes, and who delighted in surprising your own expectations. That’s where joy lives. That’s where you meet yourself again.
5. JUST PLAY. Play keeps your heart young and your spirit daring. Play keeps you from becoming the overly restrained version of yourself. It’s the antidote to becoming the domesticated version of yourself. The one who only does what is safe, predictable, and socially acceptable. Play shakes the dust off. It keeps the edges of your soul from rounding down into something too polite, too quiet, too tired. A playful heart is a rebellious heart. Not reckless, but alive. It refuses to grow dull. It refuses to fossilize. It keeps a little of its wildness, the kind that looks at life and says, “just watch me.” That’s not recklessness. That’s vitality. The kind that keeps you interesting, open, brave, and impossible to categorize. Play widens your imagination. It softens what has grown rigid. It gives your courage a place to breathe. It reminds you that you are more than your obligations and the roles you perform in public. There is a self beneath all that. It’s your freer, quicker, more instinctive self. Play allows you to let go of self-consciousness and move toward joy instead of approval. Play is not a luxury. It’s a form of maintenance that keeps your eyes bright, your imagination elastic, and your dreams stretching out in front of you like a horizon that still welcomes you.
Here's to a week of play and a version of you that is fully awake, quietly bold, and beautifully uncontained.
© 2025 D. Paul Graham, All Rights Reserved
Paul continues to refuse to doubt he can fly.
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