PLAY — A Birthday reflection
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As I walked my dog on the day after the full moon of August, I looked up at her beauty and smiled. “Tonight,” I thought, “right now is my birthday . . .”
My Hebrew birthday is always the day after the full moon. I look up at the sky and as the moon gets bigger, I know it is almost my birthday. Then, she becomes full and shines bright on the 15th of Av, a sort of love festival in Judaism and the next day, is my birthday. I cherish those evenings, looking up at the bright moon. Knowing she is ushering in my special day.
The Hebrew calendar works with both the lunar and solar cycle. I won’t go into a fascinating lesson about how this works (ask me if you’re curious because I love explaining it). But, trust me, the Hebrew calendar coincides with both the moon’s cycle and the Earth's orbit around the sun. And so my Hebrew birthday is almost always the day after the full moon in August or after the full moon in July.
Recently my wife and I moved. We downsized. We got rid of so so so many things. We had bags we junked, piles and piles we gave away, some things we sold, and then, we packed only the things that brought us joy.
One of the few things that made it into the “things that brought us joy” were my LEGO bricks.
{Image shows a well-organized LEGO storage and play area. A brown table on a patterned rug holds several clear containers filled with LEGO bricks, organized by color. There is a multi-level LEGO structure, with small LEGO minifigures positioned on various levels.}
There is something magical that happens in my brain when I build with LEGO. Following one step and then another from a printed book, trusting that at the end, when I finish the last step, the car, truck, flower, or train will emerge.
Other times the 8-year-old-boy inside of me looks around, scanning the two folding tables covered with train tracks, surrounded by parking lots of cars, trucks, and camping vehicles made of bricks, creating a village of sorts, and I smile. I try to figure out how to connect it all and then my imagination takes over. I place one brick over another, looking for the right piece, finding it, or exchanging a different one to make it look good, following my intuition, knowing that something will emerge that will make it all come together. For example, last week even though the train station came with a ramp, I built some stairs for the minifigure to be able to get onto the platform.
All my attention gets focused on these plastic pieces as I build. I follow the directions exactly or try to figure out how to make the thing that will make it better. My mind empties of worries, tension moves from my temples to my fingers as they press one brick onto another.
I am not good at this LEGO building thing, I have watched the show LEGO Masters in awe of the talent, expertise, and ingenuity it takes to create what they do. That is not what I am talking about at all. It is the love of the game, the release after a day of work, the joy of simply playing.
There are parts of me that know that there are a lot more “important” things I can do with my time, and yet, the LEGO bricks call me, to pause, to stop, to reflect, and to play. They allow me over and over again to center my mind and my heart. They invite me to slow down and to pay attention to what I am doing at the moment, on some level they are a way of meditating.
{Image shows a large, elaborate LEGO city scene with a roller coaster, a train station, a circular road with traffic signs, several vehicles (buses, cars, delivery trucks), small gardens, a number of small structures like houses and shops, and miniature people figures.}
I did not play with LEGO bricks growing up. I found them as an adult. For those of you who don’t know, a few years ago, I suffered from PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) and playing with LEGO bricks helped me tremendously during that time. I am grateful that I am no longer suffering from PTSD symptoms.
I grew up in a community that taught me to find and create meaning in everything I did, from getting dressed to housework to every moment of prayer. In the capitalist country I was raised in, I was taught to push, to make things happen, to think about money and gain in every moment. Put these cultures together and so much of how I spent my days were measured and purposeful. We even have a saying in Hebrew for wasting time, bitel z’man. I was taught from a very young age, in all the ways that made me me, a Chasidish, an American human, to not waste a second.
Therefore, keeping my many LEGO sets and the extra bricks I had amassed secondhand, when my PTSD symptoms have ended, creating space in my home to display this playful joy of mine, and to take time to play – simply to build bricks, not because I am great at it and can display it somewhere – but because it brings me joy and makes me smile, is a brand new thing for me.
Cultivating pure joy for myself goes against everything I was raised to do.
And it is absolutely worth my time. Every time.
As I walked my dog on the day after the full moon of August, I looked up at her beauty and smiled. “Tonight,” I thought, “right now is my birthday . . .” And this year, I know exactly what I envision for myself.
I have a lot I hope for, mostly for the world, but on my birthday, I took some time to imagine what I want for myself.
This year, I am not pushing myself, to DO, to BE, or to BECOME. This year I am breathing, I am playing, I am connecting to joy. This year, the year before I turn 50, I am LETTING GO.
I am letting go and cultivating joy for myself. And this LEGO thing I do, is purely joy. My collection now takes up almost an entire room in my home. And I am beginning to accept I deserve this space, this joy, this fun.
As I walked down the hill, looking up at the bright moon, the night of my 49th birthday, I felt the moment call to me . . . this year we are playing, not for the sake of getting better or managing my symptoms, but for the pure sake of the childlike joy that play brings.
What brings you childlike joy?
Can you give yourself permission to play for the sake of pure joy?
Blessings,
Chani