We Were Never Meant to Stop Playing

On our Global Brotherhood call this week, I asked a simple question: Where in your life have you felt the most rejected, and where have you felt the most accepted?

Every man had a different answer, but by the end of the conversation, we started talking about how differently we experienced failure and rejection when we were kids. We weren't constantly worried about getting everything right. We tried things, fell on our faces, got back up, and kept going. We pretended to be in the WWE and wrestled with our buddies, disappeared into the forest looking for an adventure, invented games with no real purpose, and spent hours doing things simply because they were fun.

Somewhere along the way, many of us lost that.

As adults, life becomes more serious. We have careers, families, mortgages, responsibilities, and people depending on us. We become more conscious of failure and rejection, and we start protecting ourselves from looking foolish or getting something wrong. I know I've fallen into this myself, especially after spending so many years in competitive sports where performance and results mattered so much.

But I don't think growing up means we're supposed to stop playing.

Play Doesn't Need a Purpose

When I talk about play, I don't necessarily mean sports or doing something physical. Play is anything that lights you up simply because you enjoy doing it. There doesn't need to be an outcome, a measurement, or some way to turn it into another area of self-improvement or a side hustle.

That's something I've come to appreciate more and more through The Balanced Man Retreats. We do some deep work during the week. We look inward, have honest conversations, and explore parts of ourselves that we may have ignored for years. But equally important is that we play.

We'll head into the ocean for an open-water swim, and for some guys, that pushes an edge. But there is also a moment when you can roll onto your back in the middle of the ocean, look up at the sky, and simply let the water hold you. There is nowhere you need to get to and nothing you need to accomplish.

We put on the gloves and box with Terry, wrestle and train jiu-jitsu with JJ, hike through the jungle to a waterfall, and at the end of the week, we surf.

For some men, it's their first time ever standing on a surfboard. They'll fall nine or ten times, get thrown around by the ocean, laugh at themselves, and paddle back out. Then suddenly, they catch one wave and stand up for a few seconds.

In those moments, you feel free and childlike again. Nobody cares how good they look. Nobody needs to be an expert. You fall down, so you try again.

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“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

— George Bernard Shaw

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What Play Teaches Us About Failure

As we get older, failure starts carrying so much more meaning. We don't just fail at something; we can make that failure mean something about who we are. We worry about what other people will think, whether we'll be rejected, or whether we're good enough in the first place. Eventually, the safest option can become not trying at all.

Play gives us an opportunity to experience failure differently.

When you're learning to surf and you fall off the board, you don't sit in the ocean analyzing what that failure says about your identity. You climb back onto the board and paddle for another wave.

It's such a simple experience, but it reminds us of something I think many adults have forgotten: we are allowed to be bad at things.

We are allowed to experiment, make mistakes, laugh at ourselves, and learn as we go. Not everything we do needs to become another measurement of our worth.

Imagine if we could bring a little more of that attitude into the rest of our lives. Maybe we would take more chances, have the conversation we've been avoiding, try something new, or stop expecting ourselves to have everything figured out before we begin.

From Competition to Brotherhood

Play has also helped change something in me personally.

Growing up in competitive sports, I learned to see other men as competition. There was always someone trying to take your spot, beat you, or accomplish the same thing you were trying to accomplish. That environment gave me a lot, but I also carried some of that armour with me long after I stopped competing.

What I've learned through this work is that other men don't have to be our competition. They can be some of our greatest teachers.

When you train together, struggle together, fall down together, and laugh together, the armour starts coming off. Trust develops naturally, and the man beside you stops being someone you need to outperform. You begin learning from him.

That's one of the things I love most about bringing adventure and play into the retreat. We can sit in circle and have incredibly honest conversations, but sometimes brotherhood is built just as deeply by wrestling on the mats, getting knocked over by a wave, or hiking together in the mountains.

We don't need to abandon our responsibilities or pretend we're kids again. But growing older doesn't have to mean becoming more guarded, serious, or afraid to fail.

There is still a part of us that wants to explore, get dirty, try something we're terrible at, laugh with our friends, and do something for no other reason than it makes us feel alive.

Maybe we didn't outgrow that part of ourselves.

Maybe we just stopped giving him permission to come out and play.

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