Command or prescription?

Take your pick.

First Blooms © Kathryn LeRoy

Hello friends,

“Go outside and play!”

I wasn’t trying to get rid of my children while I took a snooze on the sofa. If I’m being honest with you, and myself, I probably needed just a few moments of peace.

Why did I banish my three urchins to the confines of our fenced yard or within the well-defined parameters of our long drive? The outside is grand.

How? Outside stood a fort with stairs and a slide with a sandbox underneath where they could build stories and worlds of their own. This was where they ruled without interference from an overly protective mom, well almost.

Blue Jays fussed and flew above them. Squirrels scampered across the fence rails while small hands with trucks dug tunnels in the sand, and superheroes guarded the turrets of the castle and then stealthily slid into the abyss to trick the villains.

Children don’t need TV. They only need a nudge out the door.

I Spy © Kathryn LeRoy

Adults forget how to play. We hold up in offices, factories, or other workplaces. No more playtime or flexing our imagination muscles. No one is telling us to “go outside and play.”

When, in fact, those four words are the precise prescription for living—the anecdote for merely existing. Why should we?  John Stilgoe gives a similar command in Outside Lies Magic.

“GET OUT NOW. Not just outside, but beyond the trap of the programmed electronic age so gently closing around so many people….

Go outside, move deliberately, then relax, slow down, look around. Do not jog. Do not run….

Instead pay attention to everything that abuts the rural road, the city street, the suburban boulevard. Walk. Stroll. Saunter. Ride a bike, and coast along a lot. Explore….

Abandon, even momentarily, the sleek modern technology that consumes so much time and money now….

Go outside and walk a bit, long enough to forget programming, long enough to take in and record new surroundings….

Flex the mind, a little at first, then a lot. Savor something special. Enjoy the best-kept secret around—the ordinary, everyday landscape that rewards any explorer, that touches any explorer with magic…all of it is free for the taking, for the taking in.

Take it. take it in, take in more every weekend, every day, and quickly it becomes the theater that intrigues, relaxes, fascinates, seduces, and above all expands any mind focused on it.

Outside lies utterly ordinary space open to any casual explorer willing to find the extraordinary.

Outside lies unprogrammed awareness that at times becomes directed serendipity.

Outside lies magic.”

What are we waiting for?

Let’s go outside and play. The weather is lovely today, but if it isn’t? We can still find some magic.

Sunlight Magic © Kathryn LeRoy

Nature is a marvelous teacher, even the dandelions have a lesson.

I’m not the only one advocating for adults to go outside and play.

Watch out—here comes the sun.

”The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.”
—Eden Phillpotts

Red Bud Blooms and Blue Sky © Kathryn LeRoy

If you want to read more from me, visit my website. I’ll be there waiting for you.

With gratitude,

Kathryn

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