Becoming a Martian

Play

A lot of my sports coaching centres around the concept of play, how we react to play, how play can liberate us, and how we can get to play better.

When I first learnt how to ski I was 17. I could ice skate and roller skate pretty well anyway – and of course the idea of sliding down a mountainside at speed, with the wind rushing past my ears and through my hair, was not far away from pure pleasure! So I signed up to the school trip.
On reflection I was really fortunate in that the trip was for almost 2 weeks and not just the one. As a “nursery slopesman” for the first week I got to understand all the ins-and-outs of controlling myself using ‘snowplough’ techniques. My more accomplished peers would talk all about ‘stem turns’ and ‘parallel turns’ – and having really good fun going much faster than I was, and so I began wonder when I’d get to do these amazing skiing mysteries, and get away from the exhausting inexhaustibility of ‘snowplough’ stuff.

At the end of week 1 we all got to do our own thing. A group of us set off on a trail with our packed lunch for a few hours – and it was in those hours that I took the big leap forward. We’d all had a lot to drink the night before and, to be fair, I was the little worse for wear – but that probably also helped me get out of doing too much thinking about what was to come. We skied along narrow paths through trees, sharp turns, quite steep inclines, moguls, rocky bits – for me this was akin to an assault course. But by the end – having used my snowplough skills AND trying out all those new ‘mystery skills’ because they were essential – I really got what it was all about!

I, along with all my mates, had been at play. And for me, this particular play just took me out of myself and into a place of unfettered learning – learning how to play better at skiing.

Week 2 was brilliant because I went up a couple of groups in the Ski Schule and got to know more about going faster, parallel turns, and just how wonderful this sport is.

Interestingly, my very first real coaching experience was some 12 years later, teaching skiing to beginners. I loved it and – as I recall, my learner group loved it too!

Work

There’s an overarching concept about work, in that all the rewards are set in the future. We work at a job for pay at the end of the week, month or some arbitrary period. We work at school, learning skills that will stand us in good stead for when we go out into the big wide world. Whilst the rewards and the purposes for play are set in the Now, work is future oriented. And of course in a society or a culture that has a good work ethic, the citizens are generally future oriented too – they comfortably wear the idea of savings, and keeping things for a rainy day. Play is accepted as being something healthy, but is not entirely viewed as being totally essential – in spite of sayings such as “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”
There is a widely held view in this kind of society, that being a professional sports person, a musician (especially a rock star), an actor, comedian, dancer, artist – these aren’t “proper jobs”. To quote a phrase from an old BT advert, “You’ve got to be qualified, get yourself an ‘-ology’. That’s a real job!”
And yet in a society like Brazil for instance, these ARE all proper jobs – in fact they are highly sought after jobs! The ‘workers’ in these jobs are revered and inspire their fellow citizens - and to follow in their footsteps is, for many, their passport to a much better life for them and their families.

The thing is – the people who have “play” oriented jobs, still work at what they do! They know if they want to get better at what they love – better at their play – they have to work at it. The thing I discovered about my skiing was that when playtime eventually came around, it was THEN that I realised the value of my work. And I also realised that thereafter – when we all worked out educating our bodies to be better at doing the parallel turns - this work was integral to making the whole experience of play even better. The work was fun in and of itself – and the more open-minded the ski coach, the more fun the work can be.

“What do you want to be when you leave school?”
“We always knew he/she was going to be an X – they were so dedicated to what they did.”
“What job would you do if it didn’t matter whether you got paid or not because everything was taken care of?”

Consider the familiarity and impact of these remarks and questions. There are a lot of assumptions and presuppositions in each one, and at this point you may have already begun to notice your thinking around how they sound, and to how many different places your feelings and perceptions are now going.

Rest

Before I start talking about rest, I’d like to just throw this comment into the pond and see where the ripples might take us.
“What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”

The general linguistic notion about rest is – a change or ceasing of one activity in order to engage in a period of repose or recuperation. And in this regard “a change is as good as a rest” can be seen as a useful mantra. If we’ve just run a marathon, then a change is going to be the act of ‘not running’. Stop doing ‘A’ in order to start doing ‘B’.

How do we view ourselves ‘at rest’, how do we feel about it, how do we represent it to ourselves?
If we view rest as ‘inactivity’ then we’ll most likely feel differently about it than if we viewed it as doing ‘something else’. For even in ‘inactivity’ we are actually ‘active’.
The other thing is, seeing it as ‘inactivity’ actually opens the door to ‘laziness’ – as a judgement of both ourselves and others. If we think ‘doing nothing’ as being ‘lazy’ – then we will always be ‘on the go’ and, dare I say, judge others who aren’t ‘on the go’ as ‘lazy’.
If you were like that and didn’t know I’d just run a marathon, when you saw me resting my weariness you’d think (and perhaps say) I was lazy.
It’s not a well grounded notion though, is it?

So take a good look at how you view rest – because the rest of your life might just start to become different when you do.

So what about the rest as being the remainder? In temporal terms it’s what is left to come; in resource terms it’s what is left in the tank; in conversational terms it’s what you haven’t yet said – and so on.
These remainders all come about after some things have been done, used, spent or told. And that reminds me of another question that is designed to get us to stop and consider the importance of things to us.
“If I only had a year to live, how would I organise my life differently?”

Conclusion

There is an intricate balance between Play, Work and Rest that is absolutely crucial to the way we think, the way we act, the way we learn, the way we play, the way we earn, the way we recuperate, and the way we enjoy ourselves.

And by now you’ve perhaps already made the connection between these ideas and a well known advertising slogan.

Now if there is life on the red planet, then how much easier would it be for us to live there if we’d already taken steps to becoming a Martian? Alternatively, you may wonder what on earth all this is about!
It’s just a thought.