25. Playfulness, or Fun, Is a Virtue.
25. Playfulness, or Fun, is a Virtue.25
According to Aquinas, prophets must undergo practices that refresh one’s mind, spirit, and body on a regular basis. Aquinas celebrates the virtue of eutrapelia, which he defines as “playfulness” and calls for busy people to make room for it: “Words or deeds wherein nothing further is sought than the soul’s delight are called playful or humorous. Hence, it is necessary at times to make use of them, in order to give rest, so to speak, to the soul.” He calls for resting the soul just as we must rest the body. “Weariness of the soul must of necessity be remedied by resting the soul; and the soul’s rest is pleasure.” He tells the story of how an archer was asked if he could shoot a bow and arrow “indefinitely,” and the archer replied that if he did so “the bow would break.” He then concludes: “In like manner a person’s mind would break if its tension were never relaxed.”
Aquinas urges us to take care of ourselves and to know our limits. The prophet, especially, must be careful because even if the cause is good one cannot “cheat” on our needs to take care of ourselves. One thinks of Meister Eckhart’s teaching that “compassion begins at home with one’s own body and soul.” It is significant that Aquinas declares that “to be playful is part of the virtue of modesty.” Acknowledging our need for play respects our limits, recognizing we are all human and in need of play, as well as work. We seek a balance in our lives.
In his commentary on Matthew’s gospel, Aquinas goes on at some length when commenting on the following passage: “What description can I find for this generation? It is like children shouting to each other in the market place: ‘We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn’t dance; we sing dirges, and you wouldn’t mourn. …’ At that time Jesus exclaimed: ‘I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleases you to do’ (11:25).”
Aquinas—like Jesus—sees children as important teachers of how to have fun when he writes: “Children do not have anxieties, so they are free in regard to the things that they seek for themselves: this is playing.” Playing is about recovering the sense of freedom we felt as children. It honors the child within us all. And it honors our sense of community, which is integral to our human nature. “Human beings are naturally social, and on account of this, since one naturally needs another, they find pleasure in living together. Thus the Philosopher [Aristotle] says in Politics: ‘Every person who is solitary is either more than human and is a god; or is worse than human and is a beast.. … Thus it is said in Matthew’s gospel ‘for those sitting in the marketplace,’ because no one wished to play by oneself, but in the forum or meeting place where many gather is where play takes place.”
He compares the play of children with the “delight” that adults take in art such as admiring good sculpture. He invokes music for “nothing alters the soul like a song.” Speaking of song he reminds us that “where the word stops, there the song begins. The song is the exultation of the mind bursting forth into voice” (263). He invokes Boethius and Pythagoras, as well as the scriptures: “Wine and music gladden the heart” (Eccl 40:20). Music brings us to joy and also to weeping as in Jeremiah 9:17: “Call the mourners, and let them mourn over us” (436).
It is meaningful that Aquinas develops his teaching on fun or playfulness as a virtue in his Commentary on Isaiah. He emphasizes how prophets, too—indeed, especially—must play not only so they don’t take themselves too seriously amid their significant work, but also so they don’t take their work too seriously—though it is serious. This is all part of living and working—as Eckhart teaches—“without a why.”
But there is another reason for fun among prophets—namely, that the prophet must develop one’s creativity and imagination—and play is integral to such creativity. Here is how Carl Jung put it: “Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.”33
If play and fantasy are essential for creativity, keeping creativity alive is keeping playfulness alive. Aquinas says: “Since it is impossible to be always engaged in the active and contemplative life, it is sometimes necessary to intersperse joys with cares, lest the mind be broken by too much severity.” Furthermore, from this time for fun we return better equipped for work for “in this way a person may be more readily open to virtuous activity.”
Aquinas cautions that play and fun come in different modes. Some fun—indulging drug addiction, for instance—is a negative kind of play. But play we must, and if the positive kinds are not part of our daily habits, then we leave ourselves open to the more sinister variety. “It is natural for people to seek after pleasure, and they always seek after it and if it is lost through anxiety, then one immediately rushes into the pleasures of evil.”
Not only do we need the virtue of eutrapelia for our own health, but we need it for those around us as well. To interfere with or discourage the play of others Aquinas labels a “sin,” because it is against reason. “Now it is against reason for anyone to be burdensome to others by offering no pleasure to them, and by hiding their enjoyment.” In fact, Aquinas calls people who lack a sense of humor and cannot laugh “ungrateful boors”: “Anyone who is without mirth is not only lacking in playful speech, but is also burdensome to others, since they are deaf to the moderate mirth of others. Consequently they are sinful and are said to be ungrateful boors.”
A true prophet is eager to celebrate, love life, laugh at its paradoxes, and turn from seriousness to playfulness. (In fact, as Aquinas notes, the Greek word eutrapelia derives from the word trepein, meaning to turn.) Celebration is as much a part of compassion as fighting against injustice. Both are necessary to sustain the struggle and to sustain the soul. Celebration is integral to compassion, as Eckhart put it: “What happens to another, whether it be a joy or a sorrow, happens to me.”
I am reminded of the time I led a workshop on the Cosmic Christ in an Earth/Spirit conference in Portland, Oregon. Part of my workshop was to invite participants into circle dancing (body prayer, like art as meditation, is excellent for instructing prophets). Afterward, a young man came up to me with this story: “I am a zealot on behalf of the earth,” he said. “I chain myself to bulldozers, I lie down in front of them, and I have been to prison more times than I can count. But what we just did—dancing these circle dances—is the most radical thing I have done in my entire life. I can hardly wait to bring them back to my fellow zealots in the woods.”
Two years later I ran into him again, and I asked whether he had brought circle dancing to his fellow protestors. “Yes I did,” he replied. “And it totally changed our way of protesting. Thanks to the dances we learned to think differently, more broadly, about our task, and we expanded our network to include hunters, for example. We used to consider them our enemies, but through our expanded imaginations from doing dances, we learned they are our allies because they, too, know the game is disappearing.” Yes, all politics is about expanding the numbers who stand up and say no. We must anointing additional prophets. If creating requires “fantasy and play,” as Jung teaches, then eutrapelia is integral to prophetic training.
Another translation for eutrapelia might be, more simply, fun. Eutrapelia is the virtue of fun. We all need fun in our lives; all prophets need fun in their lives. Consider Eckhart: “What happens to another whether it be a joy or a sorrow happens to me.” Compassion is sharing not only in one another’s sorrow, but also in one another’s joy and celebration. Compassion is about both justice and love, joy and sorrow, and relieving that sorrow and sharing that joy.
I am struck and inspired by the role that fun plays among young people today—even amid climate change and all the other severe realities that face this new generation. Fun is a value for them. Without fun, our imaginations become stifled, and we cannot escape from the seriousness of the task at hand. Fun is a virtue of our postmodern times, and Aquinas, a premodern citizen, underscores its importance for both the individual and society at large.
Sins of the flesh
take you toward God;
Sins of the spirit
take you away from God.