A journey toward play helps me let go of who they told me to be
Sound issues from the start — music threaded through my guide’s inflection. A repair, a need. I can be there, hold space for my own journey. Shared guidance asks me to find the session’s rhythm: a reach here, a reach there, a choice that echoed for days. Games. Laughs. Masks. I reset into the first step: find rhythm, notice stiff spots, the tiny tensions. Placeholders for mental bruises, wounds I’m learning to name. I focus, and I release them. All week I felt a quiet judge behind my eyes — measuring care as if it mattered here. I work from desire, not obligation, yet exhaustion and joy both wash through me. My energy, my capacity, my space — responsibilities keep reaching. I keep learning, asking for help. What lesson am I here for? Is it just play? I shout, “Silly — be silly,” and laughter erupts, tingling in my fingers, toes, even my nose. I choose to go deeper into the fun. Visions of the past fly by with the same markers of play: tag at dusk, dirt under fingernails, driving fast, making music. I see my wife’s look when she sees what I wish I could see in myself. The joke is I only have to let myself be. This time it was me — and it didn’t matter. Daily play is the gift of existence. We cling so tightly we miss it. The noise of made‑up responsibility — calls, texts — fades when I accept I only need to breathe. So I breathe: deep, long, slow. The energy becomes visible. I play with that energetic goo — a vibration that hums each cell, pulling in healing. Slowing down lets me touch what matters and cast out what does not. Perspective arrives in stillness: innocence, oneness, art, shared stories. I come back leaning into the silly — the part of me that never changed. How do I keep that innocence? Remove stigma. Remove judgment. Remove fear.