What Happened to Playtime?

Graphic by Ella Sylvie

Most of us experience an anonymously harrowing transition during our preteen years. This change is diluted by being stretched out over a number of years, thus making it hard to pinpoint when such a transition occurred. Looking back on my own childhood years, I can see that there was a time when I was carefree, joyous and unapologetically experimentative. Ranging from birth to late elementary school, these years allowed me to explore my artistic instincts without pressure or burden. Playing dress-up with mismatched articles of clothing, doodling on diner tablecloths with well-worn crayons, belting my somewhat-plagiarized original songs while slamming my fingers down on the toy keyboard I never learned how to play. As children, many of us allow ourselves to explore hobbies without fear of failure. Our freedom from any financial responsibility leaves us unconcerned with receiving anything for our art, money or validation, and we are not too concerned about our future “success.”

But somewhere in my early adolescence, this unconstrained joviality came to an end. Standardized testing in elementary school would determine our middle school honors classes, our middle school classes determined our high school honors classes, our high school grades determined the fate of our college acceptance letters, and our college of choice determined our likelihood of being “successful” in our careers and therefore our lives. I went from blissfully writing fairy tales to arduously studying for the PSAT in what must have been an unidentifiable second. Specifically in the United States, educators and parents alike encourage us to capitalize on our talents. We are instructed to discover what our strengths are and apply them to a career that pays well.

To find “success” in Western society, children are taught to work to the point of discomfort; in high school, we would use a self-pitying, groaning tone to brag about how little sleep we got the night before, and in college, we do the same about how many hours we have to work at minimum wage to pay off our dollar pizza and MetroCards. The Western glorification of “productivity” further enables these self-destructive tendencies. Growing up with a father whose career is writing books and giving speeches on extreme productivity and leadership, it was ingrained in me to be as productive as possible at all times. There are 1,440 minutes in a day, and I need to maximize my minutes in order to be my very best; if I do this, I am sure to achieve career “success.” I always write “success” in quotations because it is truly such a subjective term, usually regarding some abstract accomplishment that will supposedly lead to our fulfillment. For me, “success” has always meant financial stability and admiration from others. It has never meant personal happiness. It was always assumed that I would feel that blissful validation when I was finally “successful.” 

But what I did not realize was how much this internalized capitalism was suppressing my inner child, and how long she has been struggling to get out. 

This emphasis on productivity and working to the point of discomfort infuses many of us with a suffocating feeling of guilt whenever we relax or do something fun. Every time I read a book or watch a movie for pleasure, I feel irresponsible for wasting my time with something that will not benefit my future. “This excessive stress on self-optimisation has always existed in our society. It’s part and parcel of consumer capitalism itself, stemming from ‘hustle culture’, a term coined by journalist Erin Griffith to describe a cultural obsession  ‘striving’ which is ‘relentlessly positive and devoid of humour’.” This experience of personal guilt when doing something not related to your career prosperity is so universal that I’m sure every person reading this can relate to a certain degree. Most of us know that this is toxic, hence why our generation is so critical of capitalism as a whole. But what I did not realize was how much this internalized capitalism was suppressing my inner child, and how long she has been struggling to get out. 

Last month, I read “Just Kids,” the life-changing memoir by Patti Smith. I reveled at how freely Patti and Robert experimented and evolved within their various art forms. Despite their dingy apartments and empty stomachs, they never seemed to feel guilty for spending countless hours each day playing and creating with whatever materials they could scrounge. Walking in Patti’s shoes as she fostered her artistry made me wonder if I, too, could learn a new craft from scratch. Immediately, I felt the crippling sense of fear that I would be wasting my time and therefore compromising my future if I decided to mess around with new art forms. But Patti and Robert gave me the strength I needed in the last few weeks to lean into the discomfort of this guilt, throw away any expectations and simply play.

When I tell you how revitalizing and metamorphic it has been to allow myself to write bad poetry, sketch sloppy portraits, and learn acoustic guitar and harmonica (much to the dismay of my able-eared family) without any agenda for turning it into my career, you may brush me off as dramatically hokey. But by unlocking my inner child and allowing myself to play without the pressure to gain something material from it, I have realized how much I had been depriving myself of this magic. Passive consumption of watching TV, scrolling through social media and reading books are all necessary actions to unwind, but they do not fulfill the same part of you that playtime does. Active creation energizes me in a way that passive relaxation does not; while learning guitar requires focus and great effort, it alleviates my anxiety and invigorates me to be “productive” later in the day.

I have always told myself that I could never paint, draw, write poetry or learn guitar, and with that, I closed myself off from so many windows of opportunity. I am not drawing a portrait of Bob Dylan to sell it, or learning guitar to perform concerts, or doing a paint-by-numbers landscape to procrastinate work, and because of that, I am free. I try something new, and usually, I fail to make something that could ever be profitable but still feel proud for creating something with my own hands. I have felt more fulfilled in the last few weeks of exploring these new hobbies than I have ever felt working toward my financial or career “success”.

The constant pressure for “success” pins us down until we are too old to remember a time when this feeling didn’t exist. And though aware of its toxicity, I still hear it whispering, demanding that I apply to more internships instead of wailing on my new harmonica. But if 2020 taught me anything, it is that not a single day should be taken for granted. Going into 2021, I am actively fighting against this internalized capitalism by balancing work, play, relaxation and socialization. And whether this artistic renaissance contributes to my financial success or not, I know for certain that it contributes to my contentment and tranquility in the present moment. And while it is so easy to forget, this moment is all we truly have.