Why Play Is Not a Luxury

Play opens us to the fullness of life in ways we often underestimate.

Recently, I was walking along the River Seine just as the evening light was softening the edges of the day. A small group of musicians began playing nearby. Without thinking, I twirled, allowing what my body wanted to do in that moment. A passerby smiled at me, and I smiled back. Something I had been holding tightly loosened its grip.

Joy is a small word. We rarely use it when we talk about resilience or strength. In leadership circles, we build frameworks and strategies for resilience, but somewhere in the seriousness of it all, we forget something essential. Joy is not a reward for endurance. It is part of what sustains us.

Brené Brown writes about this in The Gifts of Imperfection. In her research on wholehearted living, she found that the people who truly thrived did not simply practice gratitude or push through difficulty. Their lives included play. Not as an indulgence, but as something foundational.

I have felt this in my own life. When I allow myself time with no outcome attached — doodling, letting my fingers create the design, picking up a brush to paint a vivid sunset, stepping onto a tennis court and letting the game be just that — I return to my responsibilities lighter, clearer, and more creative than before.

Play can be solitary. A quiet hour with something that asks nothing of you. It can also be shared with laughter that catches you off guard, or a conversation that stretches into something unguarded. Both restore us, but in different ways.

What I notice in the women I work with is not that they reject joy, but that they have simply forgotten about it. Not intentionally. It slips away somewhere between responsibility and the next obligation. The game becomes another task or the first thing to be sacrificed.

Brown writes about what happens when we numb difficult emotions. When we try to mute vulnerability or uncertainty, we do not get to choose which feelings we silence. The dulling spreads. Joy goes quiet, too.

Joy is not frivolous. It is not something to earn once everything else is complete. It is a quiet form of resilience that keeps us from hardening.

The people who endure over the long run are not always the ones who push the hardest. They are often the ones who still allow themselves to be surprised, to be delighted, to be moved by something that was never on the agenda.

When did you last twirl?

If this resonated, you might also enjoy reading — Competence Isn't the Problem: Why High-Capacity Women Burn Out.