The Hunger to Grow by Peter Nicholls

Author:Peter Nicholls
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DoctorZed Publishing
Published: 2016-04-28T04:00:00+00:00

You can apply this “three-phase” thinking to virtually any enjoyable experience. Travel is another great example. Enjoyment is an experience that you create. Fun, laughter and the general feeling of pleasure and contentment are sensations that follow as a result of the enjoyable experience you created.

Enjoyment is the key to realizing your full potential. Joy enables you to blossom into the person you feel you were always capable of becoming.

The Power of Play

We tend to underestimate the power of play. Many of the most powerful features of a passionate leisure experience are typically first learned during yours early years of play – creativity, imagination, challenge, curiosity, lack of fear to give something a go without worrying whether or not it succeeds. Creating elaborate sandcastles at the beach, making up the rules of a game, with frequent changes to cope with unanticipated disagreements and complaints from other children involved in the game. And of course saying “yes I can” to any request to sing, dance, paint, draw, act or any other request to be creative. I am sure you heard the story of the child who said she was drawing a picture of God. When told that no-one knows what God looks like, she replied “they will in a minute!”

What was happening in all of these examples was the play was teaching imagination, creativity, social interaction, rule-making (leading to adult tasks of policy making and even writing constitutions, motor skills, decision-making…the list is endless. In just the five years from birth to starting school a child who enjoys these sorts of experiences is equipped with most of the basic skills of life.

Those first five years are probably the most dramatic years of growth and development. This fact is also perhaps the most powerful reminder that we learn so much more and with greater effect when the teaching process is enjoyable and includes plenty of fun and creativity. This is a valuable lesson for life and especially for your dessert years when you can once again have the freedom to freely express yourself as you did in your childhood. The rich difference in your dessert years is that you have the benefit of your life’s experiences on which to creatively express your favourite talents, skills and interests.

I once saw a sign on the fence around an urban school “no unauthorized play permitted”. How dare a school – a school! of all places! – should put that sort of a perspective on the sheer unadulterated, joyful and unbridled experience of play, be it by children or by adults. I understand the school’s legal concern about insurance risks if a person gets injured, or worse, outside school hours on the premises. But any sign on a school property that inhibits the joy of play surely goes against every principle of the aim to teach children the art of learning.

The message for your dessert years?

So much of who you are today can be traced back to your childhood. Your dessert years allow you to play with learning again.

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