Journey through the Heart:
Using Play to Combat Exhaustion
Video Transcript:
Salaam aleikum Welcome everyone. Welcome to your teaching Tuesdays and the structure Dr Ibrahim Jaffe. We’re talking about playing today and that.A lot of people are carrying tremendous burdens on their shoulders and these are emotional burdens psychological burdens. I sometimes spiritual burdens. And the emotional side of it is exhaustion that we working so hard and we’re so tired and we’re exhausted.
And the psychological burden is trying to figure out all the things that are going on in our lives around covid around, you know, being locked down, you know,all the food the food chain sort of just things like this. It just creates an entire dilemma a struggle for people and The one of the answers there are many answers to us. But is what I would call what I would call self play. And this is a way of living life that I live and people don’t realize it often because I sometimes look kind of serious, but if you look deep inside of me, you’ll see that I’m always playing.
And there’s not a moment where I’m not enjoying. Really what’s going on playing I’m playing so each moment, you know and we might be doing something very serious, but I’m looking at how can I play with that serious thing? How can I enjoy in the moment could be shopping? You know, let’s say you go to the grocery store. Okay. Well, you’ve got, you know, you got to pick some things up and it’s a burden you go there and you got to pick up those things and get in and the cart people walking around with their masks and they’re sick people, you know, the whole thing can be a little bit stressful. But if you come with a different attitude you come with the playful attitude you go and you say okay, how am I going to enjoy this?
Well, okay. So first thing is, you know, you’ve got to avoid all the people with the masks because some of them are just protecting themselves, but some of them are actually have covid and are covering up.so it’s kind of a detective game you kind of have to stay away from them,you know, and you know that the and I aged CDC says, you know six feet but social distancing, but you know, that’s really Kind of the minimum. It’s better to have 10 or 12 feet to not not have to inhale the virus. Right? So you kind of play hide and seek you you’re kind of noticing you’re watching you go around the people you’re you’re watching where there might be almost and you’re kind of circumventing it. It’s like a detective game to get around where the virus might be. You’re trusting your intuition.
So you come to a corner and somebody doesn’t feel right? I say oh there’s something not right there. You’re kind of play. I’m gonna go around that corner. I’m gonna go over here. So you’re playing when you go and you get your food. Okay. Well, let’s say you want to get some coffee. So you go in the coffee section and you pull out your Starbucks and you get your Starbucks coffee and that’s good. Now you feel a little bit better, but then you kind of go into play mode. And you say oh what else can I do here? You look around and you say oh wait a minute. There’s another coffee over here that I haven’t seen it comes from Colombia and it’s a freeze dry or something and it looks really good. I think I’m gonna try that.
So you kind of give yourself a little leeway you get that coffee as well or maybe instead this time. And so you’re using the grocery store as a way of playing. You know and then when you’re with people and people, you know, people say oh I need you. You have to be here the way I want if you’re not here, I’m gonna die or I’m gonna you know, I’m gonna fall apart and you have to show up and you have to be here for me. It creates a tremendous amount of burden and stress, especially if you think that they might die there for you now have to give everything and sometimes you don’t have everything to give you’re at your exhaustion Point yourself. What do you do you play you go into play mode? You say? Okay, how can I play? Well, this is a serious thing. You know, maybe my mom needs me to take care of her. She’s sick, but how can I play with her? You know, Mom can we play a little bit? I know you’re sick, but let’s not just make it so heavy. What can we play it? You want to you want to watch TV together?
You want to do some spiritual work together have some fun. You want to listen to some music. You know, what could we do? That would be fun. What could we do that would be enjoyable. So it’s not just so serious and so
heavy and so we learn to play life actually becomes very playful your inner child. Your magical child comes out and you start to really have fun with life. It takes a lot of the burden off. It kind of eases all the stress. Otherwise, you’re gonna get very stressed. You’re high blood pressure. Your blood pressure is gonna go out of control. You’re gonna be tired.So learning to play is really important. So that’s my gift today for everyone is the art of play as an adult and of course you got to be careful because some people just really don’t like the play and you might play with them and they get mad at you because they want it all serious, but you have to you know, enjoy your life no matter what man, you know, you can always just kind of test the water and see if somebody likes to play or not. All right. Well, thank you very much have a have a good Tuesday. Take care of yourselves. Assalamu alaikum.
