The Need to Play

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” -- Carl Jung

I love Jung's notion that "the play instinct" arises from an "inner necessity": that playing is a need as vital as food, water, shelter. But I also really love the idea that play and creativity are complicit. That the intellect has nothing to do with invention.

Every creative impulse I have today I can directly attribute to my parents' encouragement of imaginative play when I was growing up. I remember writing my first "novel" when I was nine years old. My father was the one who dragged the clunky old electric typewriter out of the closet for me, plugged it in, and gave me paper. I wonder if I would have become a writer if he hadn't let me sit there banging out words on that typewriter instead of studying flashcards.

I make my children sit down every day after school and do their homework. I am the overseer of the homework packet, the iron fist of cut-n-paste. But if my husband and I expect to raise children who make and appreciate art, isn't it our responsibility to emphasize the value of their imaginations as well as the value of phonics and multiplication tables?