Most of us hate detours- the inconvenience, having our perfect plans thwarted, losing complete control of how we get where we are going, and the uncertainty of where that detour takes us. But sometimes, detours aren't bad- sometimes they can take you to places you hadn't planned to go, but which are interesting and where you can learn something new. Sometimes, detours are good. And so it was with this week's play detour. See, I had planned to go sledding on Friday, but by Wednesday, I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn't going to happen. Sure enough, by the week's end, there was little sign that there had ever been snow. Talk about wacky weather! Anyway, Friday night, I was too tired to do anything much, and decided to read a magazine that a friend had lent me. Now I am a person who has a hard time putting down books that I am really into, so the beauty of a magazine is that I can just read one article, or even the whole thing, and it takes a lot less time than a book.
When I read, even in the case of a lot of non-fiction, I enter into the world of that piece of writing. Someone once described it as "falling into the hole" and you "emerge" when you finish. This night, I "fell into the hole" through an article about people of faith who are doing their best to live out their deepest convictions in the decaying and dying city of Detroit. They are determined not to abandon it, nor the people who live there. I was deeply moved by different ways they are working within their communities, struggling to revive what was once a bustling, vibrant urban space, where now there are some 90,000 vacant or abandoned lots and homes. As I read this article, I cried at the devastation, and marveled at the strength of the people who have committed themselves to helping Detroit and their communities. And then I imagined myself there, opening a school, where kids would have the chance to learn through multiple ways, freed from the insidiousness of standardized tests that told them they were all failures; where we could plant urban gardens to grow food we could prepare and eat at our school; where they could apply what they learn in reading, writing and math to rich content learning that incorporates social studies, science, physical education, and the arts. I fell even deeper in the hole as I read another article about people in Guatemala working to help rural children there, in a place where over 70% of the children suffer from chronic malnutrition, and many die or are permanently affected by it. Along with addressing physical needs, a school has been established for those children who have been abandoned, abused, or orphaned, and where wealthy children and children of extreme poverty go to school together, in order to encourage a closing of the social gap. The tuition of the wealthiest helps the school be able to offer its services to the orphans for free. And so I dreamed some more, envisioning a school where parents and donors who were committed to social justice would help children from all socio-economic backgrounds come together at my school to work, learn, play and live together in the heart of Detroit, or another urban center desperately in need of renewal.
This imagining has shades of the rhetoric of Fate, as explained last week, when they shared how some people who play the lottery take pleasure as they playfully imagine what they would do if they won. I play this, even though I don't play the lottery. I think about what I would do if I won some crazy super-Lotto amount, how I would pay some family members' student loans, or buy that one person a car so they don't have to drive the semi-death trap they do, and yes, how I would open a school to give students who basically have no chance, an opportunity. But this play is more than the rhetoric of fate for me. It is also the rhetoric of the imaginary. Imaginative play and imagination is a huge part of who I am, and has been since I was very young. It also intersects with the rhetoric of self, as I use it to imagine the possibilities for my future. Vandenburg says that the essence of being human is that we optimistically project our possibilities into the future: "Play is an instance of projecting one's future and the thrill is derived from exploring possibilities" (p. 187). The kind of play I am describing here is not just about pretend; it's about toying with the possibilities in a real future.
Overlapping and incorporating bits of the rhetorics of fate, imaginary, and self muddies each one, as well as the concept of play overall. I can play with the idea of future realities for hours; more than once I have drawn up basic plans for this imaginary-yet-possible-future school. What does this mean about play and my appropriation of the parts I like from various rhetorics, even as I disregard other parts? What I think it says once again, is that play is deeply complex, ambiguous, and highly individualized. I think that for some of us, it's in our nature to try to quantify it, when the reality is that it's like water poured from a glass, that flows all over the table and has no easily defined shape.
To finish: I too, hold deep convictions about social justice, about caring for others. In entering into the lives of the people in these articles, I am once again reminded of how important those ideas are to me. There is a verse in the Old Testament of the Bible that says, "He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly[a] with your God." (Micah 6:8) And in the intersections of play and life and possibility and belief and imagination, this week I pondered how I could do this, whether in Detroit, Michigan or in Mishawaka, Indiana, or Guatemala. As I said, sometimes detours are good.
To be able to imagine a better future for ourselves or others -- I don't think that's fantasy or imaginary or pretend...what is it? And I too see a connection between what some very poor and desperate folks do who sink so much money into things like lottery tickets, for just the chance for this, however remote, possibility of a future they've imagined, no, that they KNOW in their hearts because they can see themselves in it, is better. That is part of the essence of what it means to be human, isn't it, perhaps? To be able to dream of something different, whether for ourselve, our loved ones, for society? And how is that so different from what children do when they 'pretend' that they are princesses living in a castle, or that they were adopted and their 'real parents' are a rich king and queen of a far off land who will come and save them someday? Or later, that our knight in shining armor will ride up on his white stallion and grab us and take us away to his castle where we will live 'happily ever after'? Aren't we all entitled to imagine our happily ever afters?
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