As I write this we are getting ready for a trip. In about four or five hours, we’ll be picking up our luggage and getting out to the airport. We’ve got a long process of getting to where we’re going. I have to present at a couple of professional conferences. One is in Rome, Italy. The second is on a small, Greek island called Spetses. These conferences are back to back, so we’ll do the second before returning to Bermuda. That makes the total round trip look like this: Bermuda to New York, New York to Amsterdam, Amsterdam to Rome, Rome to Athens, Athens to the seaport and then over the fast ferry to Spetses, and then back the way we came.

In Rome, the group will be developing gestalt therapy theory, and on Spetses the group will be discussing the training of gestalt therapists. The first group is a mix of journal editors, gestalt therapy theorists and practitioners, and a few organisational consultants. On Spetses there will be about 40 leaders of gestalt therapy training centres worldwide.

In addition to that I’m editing a book on research and writing two chapters for a three volume set on miracles. I’m also seeing clients and working with organisations through my private practice.

Why go through all this with you? What’s the point? Recently I shared with a colleague all the projects that were on my plate, and he admitted he would not attempt a fraction of them. Again, what’s the point? The point, for me, is that some people approach what they do as WORK and some people approach what they do as PLAY. There is a world of difference between the two.

A worker punches the clock, puts in his or her time, and then goes home. They leave the job behind them, or if they work in a particularly demanding environment, they bring it home and stress over it. They may never leave the job behind them, but they hate that they can’t and that makes their lives, and the lives of everyone around them, miserable.

Workers also don’t often care all that much about the job. Once in awhile someone will manifest a high “work ethic”, but that’s all it is. Work is still work. Just because one feels one should do a good job, doesn’t mean it’s anything more than work to begin with. Left to one’s own preferences, workers would not be doing “work”. They would be playing.

That leads me to consider those who play at whatever they do. They may punch the clock like everyone else, and they may bring their projects home with them; in fact, to everyone else it might appear that they are just the same as workers, and so they may become called “workaholics”. Yet, they are not.

These people are playing. Each new project is another opportunity to be doing something that seems extremely interesting, offers a growthful personal challenge or satisfies their curiosities. Play is also not just a cognitive satisfaction. Play for these people is adventure and romance. It includes the challenge of mastery, and it’s impossible to quantify. Oh sure, others can track it on the clock, and they will complain that one is spending too much time with it. But for the player, time, as a consideration, evaporates as any kind of meaningful construct. There is only the absorbing “now”.

There is an interesting dynamic that occurs in players. When a person experiences conflict between two interesting projects, then, at any give moment, one of them becomes work. It can shift right out from under one’s feet. That which once seemed so irresistible suddenly seems like a demanding obstruction, keeping one from playing with the project that currently enjoys the greatest energy.

So, I’m off to play. I get to talk theory with some of the brightest, most intellectually stimulating people I have ever met. Two live in Geneva and work internationally with governments and corporations. Another travels constantly, teaching at several universities.

One is a journal editor. There will also be the mix of cultures and languages. Each person will present, and then we will all discuss. I think for most people this would all feel like a nightmare. Ah well.

This brings up another distinction in regards to play — people that play don’t do it for others. They play with others, but not for others. The best of all worlds is when a person’s play involves being with others. That way doing for self often means listening to, respecting, caring for, or otherwise loving and granting grace to other people, and when that happens it might look like a player is doing something for others, but it’s not work.