Playdates for adults? In an era of virtual hyperconnectivity, here’s why.
While my kids were busy, I went on a playdate.
I am a single father. I know all about play dates. In fact, organizing efficiently-executed playdates for my two young kids, is a key performance indicator that gives me a sense of accomplishment that is right up there with going to the gym regularly.
It works at two levels:
First, at the end of most playdates, my kids return to me in a far better mood than if they had been following me around doing groceries and errands, bickering and arguing among themselves, leaving a trail of woe and whine in the aisles.
Second, when its time to pick them up, I am a picture of tranquility and composure, thankful for having just had some moments of chakra-opening calm. The drive back home is inevitably, smooth sailing
Playdates are good, and so a thought occured to me some weeks ago to organize a playdate for myself. If the kids could go on one when I am busy, why aren’t adults allowed to, when they are?
“It doesn’t work that way, dude,” said a friend in India who was understandably skeptical. We were texting on Whatsapp.
“But why?” I insisted.
“It’s just the way it is. Adults go on dates, not playdates.”
“But I don’t want to go on a date. I just want to go play.”
“That’s weird man. You can always go hang with your friends and have a beer.”
“Yeah….but not quite the same.”
For one, I find it difficult to digest beer as I get older. Secondly, my mind itself is too full of ceaseless chatter, to submit to an evening of small chat and beer-soaked banter. Most of the time, I leave such hangouts even more overwhelmed, with fresh chatter and worry sloshing around in my mind.
“I just want to go and play,” I typed, “Remember what that was?”
The truth is adults are not supposed to play. We’re supposed to hold down jobs, pay bills, manage a mortgage, make decisions and recycle responsibly. At some point in our lives, play got removed.
“Well, you could always play sports with someone,” my friend said, trying to text helpful suggestions even as his battery appeared to be dying.
Then, a google search confirmed my worst fears. Play is “an activity engaged in for enjoyment and recreation, especially by children.” By children. Not adults.
Play has long been associated with inducing stress relief, encouraging creativity, boosting relationships, building social skills and enabling emotional healing.
The one context where you do see adult play is in tech start-ups. The foosball and pingpong tables have been the mainstay the Silicon Valley “dot-com” work culture, where the emphasis has been the connection between workplace productivity and a fun work environment. Some years ago, the New York Times covered the workplaces of Google and Yahoo, describing amenities such as, “Broadway-theme conference rooms with velvet drapes”; lunch-break scavenger hunts and workstations that “resemble oversize Tinker Toys”, to allow employees to be more spontaneous, and to be literally at play while working.
Back at home, though, the rules and restrictions of after-work adulthood take over. Our devices and playstations while giving us the illusion of being connected, mask the loneliness with which we are afficted in our lives.
Last year in Inc. , an article on loneliness in the digital era highlighted why the internet has made us lonelier that ever. The writer — Amy Morin — writes that we feel less connected in the digital age because:
- Our relationships have become more superficial because we don’t often talk about about real issues and problems but discuss what’s happening on social media. We are all guilty of obsessively sharing celebrity, social media gossip.
- Screen time interfreres with our ability to read social cues, verbal and non-verbal, both of which are important to build real relationships. It gets awkward to sit across the table having coffee with someone after a while.
- We emphasize quantity instead of quality of relationships. The number of friends, likes, or comments on social media is itself a topic of our virtual interactions.
- With so much screen time, where is the time and space to go find face-to-face interactions when we are constantly being interrupted and distracted by the buzz and beeps of our devices.
- We are all part of a floating, mobile, virtual population that is growing bigger by the day, and more and more disconnected. Many of us live in distant suburbs or in impersonal, urban apartment blocks designed for function than for interaction. School districts, time to commute and stable house prices are a bigger consideration for living in or moving to a place than is the presence of a welcoming, interacting community. And quite frankly, many of us live far away from family, away from our hometowns, where, in fact, very few of those with whom we grew up, with whom we had playdates as kids, themselves, remain.
- With marriages and families under strain from the trammels of life in the early 21st century, pulled in different directions, many adults are under the risk of meaningful connection, outside and inside the home.
So, the last time I saw my friend Teo over coffee in Geneva, a couple of weeks ago, I asked him to a playdate. At first we laughed at the awkwardness of my request, but then he pulled out his calendar and asked, “ When?”
So what did we do? We talked; did role play, with me playing the role of an interviewer and he a world-class expert in his subject saying something really insightful, that he could then apply directly to a project he was working on. We even ended up filming the interview on my cellphone and later editing the video, imagining him to be on TV or featuring in his own, branded Vlog, getting a gazillion hits. We laughed, made coffee, unched down snack, and imagined us making millions designing mobile apps backed by fictional VCs. Some great ideas emerged that we promised to test out in real life. We then followed his new cats around, wondering why they scratch the poles so much. Earlier, Teo brought out his Lego set (inspired in part by Lego Serious Play)and poured the pieces all over the table, and we built a scene that I believed represented my chaotic, tumultuous life. Teo, an organizational behaviorologist, bravely, and quite accurately, interpreted.
Not only did we further cement our relationship and friendship, we affirmed our trust in one another; we sharpened our professional skills; we created new visions and purpose for our lives; we demonstrated hidden talents none of us knew we had; we harnessed spontaneity when we felt bored and invented new dimensions to our play. And when we were done playing, we were really done, both tired but fulfilled, ready to return to routine again.
When Teo’s kids came that afternoon just as I was getting ready to leave, they asked what we were doing. We were having a playdate, I stated quite plainly. Oh, the look on their faces!
