Lessons From My Silly Husband

Southern California’s weather in late May was intense, suffocating heat. The kind where you go outside and you wonder if your eyeballs are going to burn to a crisp. I would have loved to run through a sprinkler, or, better yet, splash around in a plastic kiddie pool. But I didn’t. In my mind, grown women don’t run through sprinklers or splash around in kiddie pools. So I stuck to the grown-up method of cooling off — a cold shower.

I took the safe route.

I have lots of safe routes. I know how to enjoy myself at a coffee shop with a good book in one hand and a tall caramel latte with soy in the other. I go to movies or watch re-runs of The Wonder Years on Netflix. Travel is a delight, and I appreciate eating good food. But I wonder if I am engaging in real “play” in these activities, or if these have just become my socially acceptable ways of relaxing as a grown-up. Perhaps comedian Jerry Seinfeld was right when he joked, “98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.” Maybe these are just my ways of killing time.

Killing time doesn’t require vulnerability. I can keep my perfectionism and self-consciousness.

Playing does require vulnerability. There is always a chance of looking silly, imperfect.

Yesterday my husband and I sat on a park bench eating our fro-yo. We both noticed a group of six bees hovering around a nearby water sprinkler. Looking a little silly, my husband began investigating the situation, getting down on the ground looking for more water sprinklers and exploring whether bees were hovered around those, too. He was also scouting out the trees and questioning aloud what kind of birds must live in them.

I interrupted his moment.

“Are you about ready to go?” I had finished my fro-yo, the clock was ticking, and heck, he looked kinda silly.

I watched as he disappointedly extracted himself from the enchanted world of bees, trees, and water sprinklers that had swallowed him up, back into the world of an impatient wife with a wristwatch.

I realized at that moment, “Ah, this is play. He’s playing right now.”

I tried to re-capture the playfulness for him. “Oh yeah! I wonder what kind of birds are up in that tree?” He seemed momentarily interested, but then, “Yeah, I guess we better get going.” He was back in the world of responsibility and deadlines. My wristwatch and I had killed the moment of his playful vulnerability.

His bee exploring was spontaneous. There was no room for wristwatches or keeping on schedule. Play goes against the very nature of perfectionism. You just go with the flow in play. You don’t see children scheduling a balloon fight and checking it off the list. They just naturally do it.

Looking back, I can see how my husband had allowed himself to fall deeply into his play, shutting out the world, allowing it to lead him to the next exciting discovery, defenses down. He embraced timelessness. It was natural and it seemed familiar to him. This was the type of play he had engaged in during his childhood.

As adults, some of us have either forgotten how or are too scared to play. Our defenses have taken over and at some point we lost that natural ability to skip down the street, allowing our sheer joy to bounce us lightly from one foot to the next. We use time to keep us responsible. We use defense mechanisms to keep us from looking silly. A defense mechanism is something we develop as we experience hurt and don’t want to feel hurt again. They can be used in healthy or unhealthy ways depending on the situation, but often can keep us in protective mode, not allowing our authentic selves to emerge. This can be a way of avoiding rejection, but we miss the freedom found in frolicking.

Children don’t have this problem yet. They can act silly and are unaware of how silly they look. Their defenses haven’t been developed enough to keep them from risking. They experience freedom in being themselves without fear. Their guards are down. When our guards are down as adults, we can become more like children and throw all of our concerns for perfectionism and performance to the wind.

I fear we are missing out on one of the ways that we can feel most alive. Real play allows the true us to shine through in all of its glory, opening ourselves up to experiencing and receiving God’s extended hand of timeless acceptance, even in, and especially, all of our silliness.