Bring frolicking back

Play is survival. Joy is.

I spend a lot of time frolicking, thinking about when I will next frolic and talking about the immense joy that comes from frolicking. One thing about me, I know how to frolic. It’s my past-time of choice, and has steadily tip-toed its way into becoming my entire identity at this point. I have tasked myself with many a mission in this life. I am the unofficial spokesperson and PR for pigeons. I’m an advocate for slowing down for long enough to remember what it means to be human and create meaningful social change. I am also on an assignment to bring frolicking back.

Quite simply, I don’t think that adults frolic anywhere near enough. Even the dictionary definition of the word is exemplified by children instead of adults engaging in the act. While frolicking is said to be about playing or moving around in a lively, happy, and merry way it is so much more than that.

Frolicking is not an act, activity or even an action. Frolicking is a way of being. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a way of engaging in the world. Being in it. Seeing it. It’s inhabiting a spirit of buoyancy and play, while allowing all of your senses to be immersed in whatever it is that you’re doing. It’s a sense of freedom. Unapologetically owning your delightful silliness. Remembering that you were once a child and there’s still the energy of a child living within you, if only you’d let them run wild and free.

The internet wasn’t designed for us to live the entirety of our lives on. We reconnect to nature, people, animals, birds and everything that exists here when we frolic. We connect back to ourselves. The self that doesn’t have to find the right words to say or live in anyone else’s expectations and shoulds. You don’t have to pay to frolic. There’s a local park or maybe even the sea. I spin around while looking up at trees. Let butterflies land on my finger before they fly away. My best friend, B and I stroll along hand in hand making up games and songs. We get giddy by treating supermarkets like playgrounds. I played Pooh sticks standing over a bridge with my boyfriend after exploring a forest together, at the weekend. I laugh. Boy, do I laugh.

Frolic City

Being an adult can be dreadfully dull, what with the figuring out tax bills and catastrophising about improving one’s gut health. We deserve to frolic from time to time. As someone who is obnoxiously well therapised, spiritualised, and embodied in both; I am dedicated and in great devotion to my personal growth both for myself but for everyone whose lives I may touch. I analyse everything, read constantly, debate and sift through newspapers. I don’t la-la-la my way through anything, because my very existence as a Black woman is political and sewn into my tendons.

With that said, my weariness peaks when I see statements floating around social media, that say:

How can people smile when thousands of others are dying?
How can people just carry on with their day when the planet is burning?
How can people keep sharing their outfit of the day and brunch photos when the world is going to shit?

If you are complaining and criticising some people for living, then do you actually care about life? The assumption is that if you’re continuing to live during tragedies and atrocities that you must not care about them. Some people may not. Most people do care, they just may not perform their care in the way that the chronically online would like them to. Life continuing is how we survive. There will never be a time during human existence where we are not asked to hold both grief and joy, pain and love, heartbreak and bliss at the same time. If we can’t hold both then actually, there is no life. Plus, not everyone is you. What hurts you to your core and renders you incapable of doing anything, may not hurt someone else to the same degree. There’s no right way to feel or approach life. Someone else might still be hurt but also able to continue. We are all different. Let us honour it.

Who are we in our lovely homes, running water, walking to and from the fridge ten times a day, sleeping on pudding soft mattresses, texting people we love and lighting cedarwood scented candles while we read our books and living in safety to not live? When that life has been stolen, beaten out of, never experienced and murdered out of so many people. This is not one of those angsty, “you should be grateful” pleas. Our struggles are our struggles. At times our mental health makes that life feel unliveable. We’re all going through things that diminish our ability to show up fully for life. Yet, we only know grief and loss because we know how to live. If you have the capacity to frolic, then go and fucking frolic. It might not be today. Or even tomorrow. It might be for 5 minutes or even ten. Use your life. Be in it. Savour it. Go and play.

I am always turned on by life, but it can be the cruellest of lovers at times. We need change. We need a goddamn revolution. There’s a quote often misattributed to Emma Goldman, that says, "If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution", she didn’t actually say this but in her autobiography Living for Life, she expresses the below:

“At the dances, I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha, a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause. I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business. I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from convention and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement would not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it.”

The words that megaphone their way out of the text for me are these:
“The denial of life and joy.”

No thank you. I don’t want any part of it. It is a privilege to be alive. The biggest. Every single year I have been alive on this planet, millions died at that age every year. There are people who never made it to the 34 years I have. There are people grieving, wishing and hoping for one more day with the people who they lost at 34 years old. We can’t deny someone’s life and joy. We can’t deny our own life and joy because we believe that there are more serious things, adult things, things that demand our responsibility. Joy must be knitted in to all of it.

I’m going to dance during a heatwave until I blister. I’m going to frolic in open fields with sweat dripping into the lace of my bra. I’m going to kiss in the middle of cobblestone streets and laugh until I’m gasping for air to reach my lungs. I’m going to paint at weekends, and sing songs from primary school into the walls of my home. I’m going to make up silly games to play with the people I love and create bedtime stories that are beyond comprehension.

There is a child living within me. I was once her. In many ways I’m still her. I feel her each time I frolic in glee. I owe it to her to “play and behave in a happy way” as she had to grow up before she was ready to. She had to become an adult before it was her time. She was just a girl and as a woman, I refuse to deny her life and joy.

When I was growing up, I didn’t see images of Black people frolicking or going for walks in nature, I didn’t see us bird watching or running free through open fields. I saw us being brutalised in those fields. Hands cut. Sweat burning out of our skin. Whipped in those fields. Living my ancestors wildest dreams is not just about “getting the bag” and having a list of accolades behind my name, for me it is to run around, be free, and to immerse myself into the land, soil and sea that is our birthright as citizens of this planet to enjoy. I will never deny myself joy. I will never deny myself life.

Bring Frolicking Back
Never lose your silliness
Laugh for as long as you need to
Play without needing an excuse
Find some green space to roll around in
When’s the last time you skipped?
Make up games that make no sense
Tell jokes that are as stupid as they are funny
Lie around in the sun
Eat the treats and sweets
Run through mud and trees
Dance for hours and forget to sleep
You can rest down the heaviness sometimes
Make the time to frolic