On Play and Possibility: Part II
A Lot of House Money Well Spent
[Editor’s Note: This is Part II of JDK’s final My Sunday Post for 2020. Be sure to check out Part I first, then come back for this one. And no fair scrolling down to read the ending first. Happy Final One Finger Salute To 2020 Day, all…]
December 31, 2020
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Play and Possibility are two of the most powerful words out there, and they are inextricably linked at this time of year, but can and should be every day of the year.
Play conjures images of lightheartedness and of fun, while Possibility triggers the imagination to consider what might be. Play excites us with the – ahem – possibility of all the types of fun we can plan and create in the upcoming year, while Possibility gets us wondering about what might happen, what could happen – both good and bad – and makes us ask ourselves what we want to make happen.
Two very powerful words, especially when combined for New Year’s celebrations. Coming off the hurry and stress of the week before, New Year’s is a heady tonic as both the final blowout of the holiday season and as a pressure release from it, as it gets us excited for the upcoming year. What do we want most from the new year? At those celebrations, what are we focusing on most?
Play and Possibility.
The image everyone knows that exemplifies these two intertwined ideas is the Ball Drop in New York City. Many people have a NYE visit to Times Square on their bucket list for that reason. I don’t really, mainly because I can’t imagine a worse combination than being freezing cold and packed into a huge city square, unable to move or hear anybody because it’s so loud. That’s just me. I’d take a Hawaiian New Year’s without hesitation.
Because as I discussed last time, a Hawaiian New Year’s Eve party is far more than a great memory or photo montage on social media – it stays with you. It changes how you think and move and view your world. It also puts forward Possibility unlike most other celebrations out there - and it is inextricably linked with Play. Just like how I think it should be in the other 363 ¼ days of our yearly lives.
Let me explain.
I do NOT mean that every day of the year should be a New Year’s party. Charlie Sheen already beta tested that for us and it clearly didn’t work. Honor Charlie by not being THAT Charlie.
What I DO mean is that linking Play and Possibility are actually innate, but they require Intention to apply in life in healthy and nondestructive ways. And, importantly, it’s imperative to accept that neither may go the way you want or expect.
I see your furrowed brows - how does a Hawaiian New Year’s party illustrate that? So glad you asked. This takes a little backtracking and context.
Like so much else in Hawaii, New Year’s celebrations are an amalgam of about a dozen distinct cultures, primarily from Asia. I already mentioned the varieties of food at Hawaiian New Year’s parties - it’s a culinary pile up, the food equivalent of a bunch of cultural festivals going on all at once, where the food vendors give away their creations for free. And there is simply so much of it that no one can try it all - there are so many possibilities. I remember being reluctant to try some new food that looked or smelled weird, but also the several times when I tried it anyway and loved it (hello, Manapua), and a few times where I tried it and didn’t (goodbye, Lomi-Lomi Salmon). It’s life on a plate - some possibilities turn out to be delicious, others not so much. But I’ve got to try it to find out - especially when I know that none of the options are going to harm me.…
The cultural contours of a Hawaiian New Year’s are also an amalgam, unsurprisingly. It’s true the rest of the year, too. For example, it is bad luck to whistle at night in Hawaii, a superstition found throughout Asia. And every year, most in Hawaii celebrate Boy’s Day and Girl’s Day, two decidedly Japanese traditions - I still have the carp kite / flag that people who have a boy at home fly on that day (one flag per boy). And on New Year’s, the entire fireworks spectacle perfectly matches the longstanding ancient Chinese legend upon which it is based.
Wait - you don’t know it? Okay great - (hi)story time!
Every Spring (the time of Chinese New Year), so legend has it, a terrible monster named Nián would attack villages and farms and eat the locals. It was the event around which the entire year revolved - dreading and preparing for the yearly arrival of an unstoppable monster. But then, one year, Nián approached a village where locals were burning bamboo to keep themselves warm on a cold early spring night. As bamboo does when it burns, it crackled loudly as the alarm bells rang out and people fled in fear. But everyone was shocked when the monster fled instead. Word spread from village to village that perhaps Nián was...afraid of burning bamboo?!?!? Elated by the seemingly miraculous news - the impossible becoming possible - all the villages started burning bamboo to protect themselves, and the monster was driven away. As years went by, it clearly wouldn’t do for every village in China to burn bamboo all spring every spring, so firecrackers ended up replacing the crackling sound of the bamboo (leaving interior decorators and Giant Pandas eternally grateful). So, every year, the Chinese ring in the new year by lighting off firecrackers that chase away a giant dragon (you’ve all seen it in movies, and if you haven’t, you need to see more movies).
Oh, and guess what Nián means in Chinese? - “Year.”
Seriously, it does.
Hence, firecrackers at New Year’s. Ancient China’s enormous influence on its Asian neighbors exported both fireworks and their association with the driving away of evil spirits / calling out to good ones, and those in turn made their way to Hawaii.
So we come full circle. What I love about that story is that, while it is rooted in the driving away of a monster, over time the celebration became more about starting the year on a good note, free of “monsters” that bring misery. While we worry about external monsters like disease, death, and misfortune (like pandemics or lost jobs) and hope to never see them in the new year, often the monsters we most hope to drive away are internal ones like Fear, Doubt, Resentment, Hopelessness, Depression, and Loneliness. At New Year’s we imagine the possibilities of what life would be like free of those and what new bandwidth would open up in our lives as a result.
Part of what we use to build that hope - to feel it - on New Year’s is Celebration. It’s what I did on every Hawaiian New Year’s.
I Played to engender hope in the Possible.
It’s how Play and Possibility are connected. They both build and express hope for changes internally during the year. When we feel or practice one, it helps produce the other. And when those internal changes come, some external ones seem to follow.
Funny how that works.
We make resolutions out of Possibility, then don’t hold onto them - I’d guess - because we don’t see results as quickly or as easily as we’d like. That’s a form of Possibility that we try to control , even if it is around things that we have to do in order to see results - like exercise to lose weight or save money to pay off credit cards. Play can help - by finding new ways to spend less money on fun activities or rewarding ourselves for hitting our exercise goals.
But it’s the Possibility we can’t control that gets tricky - often things we cannot anticipate happening in the first place. When I say that, I automatically go to negative things, and those are certainly scary possibilities. But what of the potentially GOOD ones? We often don’t look at those, do we? I, for one, historically don’t spend nearly as much time wondering about - or hoping for - the good Possibility than I do fearing the negative ones.
I’m getting better at it. It took awhile to get there, but it’s been worth it.
Back at the end of my destructive days, when I caved in my whole life, I was on the plane to Seattle to start all over again when it hit me - I had lost everything, literally, that I thought I could not live without. And yet, I was still standing. So that meant that anything - literally - had become possible.
Or, as I put it to a friend soon after, “I’m playing with House money.”
For that reason, in the past ten years I’ve learned to trust in Possibility more and more, to trust uncertain situations as necessary until they reveal the lesson I am meant to learn from them. After years of numbing my feelings and trying to control outcome - the root of all my destructive behavior - I began to slowly but surely let things play out, to observe them and my own responses to them. Having lost it all once, I wasn’t really afraid of falling back to that “zero point,” as I’d already done it and knew I could face it again if necessary.
But by having that hope in Possibility to show me where to go and what steps to take next, and by not self-sabotaging myself as I wait for each Possibility to play out, it soon became clear I won’t be going back to zero. Instead, I’ll end up learning lessons I need and following paths that I never expected. And it's all for the better - even when the lessons suck and the paths scare the hell out of me.
For a long time, though, those internal monsters like Fear and Self-Doubt and Self-Recrimination held on for dear life, even as my life improved in all the areas where I’d failed miserably before. I had a hard time advocating for myself in my chosen jobs, and had an even harder time using my voice in my close relationships, platonic and otherwise. Everything felt more weighty than light, more foggy than clear. And it wasn’t fun, because as I mentioned last time, I really didn’t know how to initiate Play - whether it was to get relief, to help “let go” of things in the past or even the present, or build hope in Possibility.
Play can be the catalyst for all of that. I am learning that it is the greatest facilitator inside of us to engender hope and belief in Possibility, while accepting the fact that bad things - tough things - will indeed happen, no matter how much we worry about them in a futile attempt to reduce the pain in advance.
Which never works. When tough, painful Possibilities become Reality, it always hurts no matter how much or how little we fretted about it or expected it.
So I’m learning to focus on Play a lot more.
It took me nearly nine full years to realize something that seems so obvious in retrospect; what should I do with House Money?
I should PLAY.
And only by playing do Possibilities - the good ones - truly emerge.
I didn’t know it when I was a kid running around hopped up on Dr. Pepper at 2:30 am throwing lit firecrackers into the street, but innately I was practicing ALL that on New Year’s. Playing, which fed my hope for even better times ahead.
And I can’t think of a better way to frame the start of 2021 - a year we have all been yearning for throughout much of 2020.
This past year’s external threats triggered our internal monsters, and vice-versa for far too many of us. We all have hope that this next year will be different, and we desperately want to drive away those monsters in the hope of peace, quiet, and a return (as much as possible, as soon as possible) to the things we care most about. Make your list - family, time with friends, travel, ball games, concerts, a regular school schedule. Go ahead - write it up right now. All the Good Possibilities. And then, make a separate shorter list of the internal monsters and what they tell you might be Bad Possible.
Put the Good list somewhere you can get to it easily. Burn the Bad one. Take that version of Nián and do your own figurative bamboo burning or firecracker throwing. That will be fun enough. And then, Play. Make that list, too (I called it the Good Fun list in Part I) - what can Play look like now and once things free up a bit more COVID-wise?
Put that list next to the Good Possibility list.
And there you have it. Play and Possibility for 2021, just for you.
It’s not a resolution list, but I’ve found that Play and allowing Possibility does the same thing - except it works far better than straining to achieve resolutions.
It’s House Money.
So instead of telling 2020 to stick it (again), let’s do what we can ACTUALLY do and let it go. By Playing.
And welcome in 2021 by embracing Possibility through Play.
So raise your glass. Or light your firecracker. Or lift your Spam musubi.
Here’s to House Money in 2021. Let’s Play for the Possible.
Chins Up, Everyone.
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Thanks for reading My Sunday Post. Here are important awards from my year:
Best Book I Read: Caging Skies by Christine Leunens. Then watch JoJo Rabbit.
Best Show / Movie I Watched: Three way tie - Away, Das Boot (Season One), and Minari
Best Thing I Ate: Pastrami sandwiches at Dingfelder’s Delicatessen (Seattle). Put it on your list. Now.
Best Life Development: New Job and Career Path - thanks, Julia!
Best Editor / Creative Consultant: Cyra - five years in a row. None of this happens without you!
Best Accomplishment: Season One of my podcast. Thanks Stacy, Auzzie and Dave!
Best Day of the Year: One Day in Carmel, CA. Don’t ask - it’s Mine. :-)
Health Hero of the Year: Tawny Sanabria. Words just can’t cover or convey it. Thank you.
Life Soundtrack Artist of the Year: John Craigie.
Biggest New Personal Discovery: What it means to Play. There is no second place.
Longest Walk / Run of the Year: 25.45 miles on a Walkabout - Memorial Day weekend
Most Fun Moment: Going flying with my 17-year old nephew at the controls (August)
Most Unexpected Gift: A Spin Bike for triathlon training?!?!? Thanks, You Know Who You Are!
How Did I Ever Live Without This Award: This Avocado slicer. It’s magic.
Meme Champion of the Year: C’mon, all. It’s Baby Yoda by a mile. He’s the Anti-2020 Hero We Need.
