“All play and no work makes Jack a dumb boy”
True or false? “All play and no work makes Jack a dumb boy”. An expression most of us have heard at some point in our lives, but how true is it really?
Let’s look at the word PLAY. According to the Collins Cobuild Dictionary, PLAY can be defined as the following – When children, animals, or perhaps adults, play, they spend time doing enjoyable things, such as using toys and taking part in games. So this is our typical definition, stating that playing is something fun, light-hearted, unconstructive and seemingly not for adults.
Here, however, is slightly different definition from the same dictionary- You can use play to describe how someone behaves, when they are deliberately behaving in a certain way or like a certain type of person. If something or someone plays a part or plays a role in a situation, they are involved in it and have an effect on it. Well, look at that, looks like PLAY could very well be constructive, serious and maybe even goal orientated…who would’ve thought?
I would define adult PLAY as life experience; it’s what you do when you attend the University of Life. Think of how many valuable lessons you learnt as an adult when you were “playing games” or “playing certain roles” or just “playing the field”.
Now, let’s consider the word WORK. The first definition in the dictionary is people who work have a job, usually one which they are paid to do. Yes, absolutely true, this was my understanding of the word WORK…until I read the following – When you work, you spend time and effort doing a task that needs to be done or trying to achieve something. To me this seems like it could be referring to adult play as well – you could be someone who loves to paint or play music and even if you are not getting paid for it, it is still work in the sense that you are completing a task.
One could then call adult PLAY a form of WORK, the only difference being that you usually spend money rather than make money when you play. Traveling, Googling, drinking, Facebook, creative expression, reading. All these things take time, they take energy and effort and all these things include an experience, and in my mind experience equals knowledge, and knowledge is not dumb. But wait – let’s define the word DUMB.
DUMB can be defined as the following – Someone who is dumb is completely unable to speak. If someone is dumb on a particular occasion, they cannot speak because they are angry, shocked, or surprised – they are speechless. So, just like PLAY and WORK, DUMB is not what I thought either.
All in all, I would have to say that the above expression is untrue because WORK is PLAY and PLAY is WORK. They both result in the achievement of something, and in my opinion, there are always moments in between all the work and the play where we are all completely DUMB or in other words…speechless.
“All play and no work makes Jack a dumb boy”? What do you think?
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