Playtime is Coming to an End

Death is easy. Life on the other hand is hard. Life sometimes feels stifling. You get up and go to work or even before that you have to make breakfast for the kids. Everything can seem like a constant struggle to fit into that weekly schedule. I am 'economically inactive' (aka unemployed at the moment) and my schedule is busier than when I was working. A sudden spurt of free time means I get to spend more time with friends, date more, and even check out movies at 2pm in the afternoon. The only time I can remember my life being free of social schedules was when I was a child.

Being a child is fun, carefree, and relaxed. All you need is imagination and spirit. But over the past decade that too has changed. Most children now in the U.S. have more scheduled in their diary for a week than I do the entire month. One day it's piano, the next it's football, the next it's baseball, Boy Scouts, swimming, you get the picture . Parents of course now schedule play dates. When I was a kid I woke up gathered the kids on my block or neighborhood and we played stick ball or baseball in the street. We didn't schedule anything. We just played until our parents called us in for dinner. I still like to just wake up and follow the wind.

But it appears the social scheduling for kids is getting even worse. In Today's NYT there is a piece about hundreds of schools now scheduling and overseeing recess time for kids. David Elkind in the NYT who would generally be opposed to this kind of structure for kids is actually in favor this time. I, on the other hand think kids should be kids and find this continued structure and scheduling to be an alarming trend. It suppresses imagination and fosters children to grow up to live in a society where everything has to be structured and scheduled and coached. I just don't see the fun in that.

I love traveling and meeting people in a cafe in a foreign country. Sometimes I talk to random strangers on the beach or in the theatre or even on the bus. That is what life is all about. Life is about living it. Life is about free time and figuring out what to do with it. So many of us turn 30 and 40 and realize that we are not happy with life or what life has become. In an age of so much wealth and prosperity the levels of anxiety and depression continue to rise. I am not sure how a more structured recess time will lead to happier and more developed children.

I know I am not a parent, but I am a child who values his freedom. Let your child grow up and make mistakes and learn from life. Let them figure out what road to take and sometimes that means letting them go down dead end streets only for them to come back and make the right turn. Life is made up of happy moments. Their is no coach, no psychologist, no parent who can create happy moments in life. Those moments just come when you least expect them.

Remember you can't schedule happy moments. They come and go just like the wind, but they never leave our memories.