I accidentally in your base

What are we doing in the dojo? We might have first come to aikido for self-defense or fitness or balance. But after a few months these considerations fade away. We are doing it, with all that it entails – strenuous exertion, pain, close calls, occasional injury, along with years and years of what you might call 'hard work' – for the sheer delight of it.

We are playing.

Other things can be explained in terms of play, but play, being primordial, can’t be explained in terms of other things. Play precedes culture. It extends beyond the rational, beyond abstraction, beyond matter. Play in short, is irreducible. Let’s simply say that play is whatever absorbs us fully, whatever creates purpose and order, whatever involves us in as much meaningful interaction as possible.

"One's body," Aikido’s founder said again and again, never tiring of the words "is a miniature universe". The evolution of the physical universe has involved the same sorts of interactions as those within the body; the almost impossibly delicate balance of force, close calls, near brushes with disaster. No wonder then that our best myths and dramas as well as our best games involve precarious moments of suspense during which all seem lost and then, somehow, against all odds, is saved. Could it be that the universe itself is a vast conspiracy to maximize play?

If so, how sad it is, as we leave childhood behind, that we are taught in countless explicit and implicit ways to work hard rather than to play joyfully. We find ourselves imprisoned on an iron rack of contingencies. We are taught to do one thing only to achieve another thing. Study hard so that you’ll get good grade. Get good grade so that you’ll get into a good college. Get into a good college so that you’ll get a good job. Get a good job and work hard so that you can have the good things in life. By the time you get the “good things,” however, you can barely remember how to play.

Aikido summons all of us, whether we do aikido or not, to play or to keep playing from childhood to old age, to seek out the possibilities of play in every aspect of living – in what we call “work,” in love and sex, in relationships with family and friends, even in taking a walk around the block.

The strange thing is that when we approach an activity in the spirit of play – fully, joyfully, and primarily for its own sake – we are likely to achieve not only the greatest happiness, but also the best results, the most enduring success.