Play vs Purpose

My friend Page was putting me through a simple thought experiment.

“You have a choice,” he told me. “You could be an artistic genius and do creative work all the time. Everything you do would be beautiful and aesthetically perfect, but purely for show—you couldn’t use it for anything. Or you could do work that’s useful and serves humanity. You would create things that have utility and engineer them to perfection, but they’d be devoid of any creativity—completely utilitarian. Which would you choose?”

I considered it for a minute. Of course I want to be able to serve the world and help people, but I want to do creative work as well. I want to put something of myself into whatever I’m doing with my life. Who wouldn’t? I want to have the feeling of play in the work that I do. But I also want it to have a purpose.

Thus the answer came to me.

“Screw that,” I replied. “That’s the problem with modern life. We think we have to do one or the other. Like, I have to choose between being a lifeless automaton or a useless diva. But both of those sound terrible.”

His point was that people err on one side or the other. But I disagree. So now I’ll approach the flagpole and run up my pet virtue: balance.

We often learn by playing, messing around, and not taking things too seriously. Try to force perfection on the first attempt at something and it’ll never get off the ground. But once we’ve learned a little about what we’re doing, it’s time to take it somewhere. Generally, we want there to be a purpose, and we want to progress. But play is still important. Get too serious and things will dry up and become lifeless.

For example, writing follows this formula. Most of writing is a creative process. You open a blank document and stare at it absentmindedly for a while. Then you collect your thoughts and hope they will hold together long enough to spill out onto paper. It’s an adventure every time, because you never know what’s going to come out. You have to play with it. But you still write for a reason: to inform, persuade or entertain a reader. For instance, I’m writing to inform you of my experiences and persuade you of my ideas—and hoping to entertain you long enough to get you through the article.

This play-purpose dichotomy relates directly to a schism in human psychology: right-brain versus left-brain thinking. Play is the right brain—painting outside the lines and playing with possibilities. Purpose is the left-brain—processing information and shoving it down a logical path toward a purposeful goal. While the alphabet is primarily a left-brained technology, there is still a right-brained component.

We use our linear processing and sharp focusing capabilities to interpret and absorb one symbol at a time in rapid succession. These are left-brained faculties. But then there is the synthesizing of story—the abstraction of imagination taking in the meaning behind the writing. These functions require the aid of the right-brain. Thus, the full potential of the brain—at least in the adequate communication of thoughts—is unlocked only when we find a way to balance the two hemispheres.

When writing by hand, a writer mainly uses one hemisphere or the other—at least for physical control—depending on whether the writer is right handed or left handed. Each side of the brain is responsible for controlling the opposite side of the body—right controls left, left controls right. But when typing, both sides are employed equally. In this way, typing may serve as a balanced mode of getting our thoughts out.

The play-purpose concept doesn’t just relate to our professional lives and the skills we live by. When we were kids, it never would have occurred to us that play and purpose should be separate. Kids make games out of all kinds of useful things: playing house and grocery shopping with mini kitchen appliances and toy food, acting out the roles of married couples negotiating domestic logistics. They play at being doctors, fire fighters, and even inventors.

Kids make games of the things they want to do with their lives—useful things that they’re not old enough to do yet. But those games are important. Perhaps there is an imbalance at that age—too much play and not enough purpose. But I’d argue that the opposite imbalance exists for adults—too much purpose and not enough play. If only we could remember how to make grocery shopping into a game—we’d probably be a little bit happier.