An Ode to Play: Why returning to imaginative play as an adult is the best way to feel like a kid again (and figure out who you want to be as an adult)

At some point in our adolescence, we grew out of playing make-believe. After years of DND and relearning how to play and pretend as an adult, I can’t help but think the loss of imaginative and creative play is what makes it so easy to lose the core understanding of yourself and who you want to be as a grown-up.

The pandemic was, like, 95% awful. I was fortunate enough to be safe and not risk daily exposure, so the primary burden was the experience of spending 20 and 23 pretty much alone. Don’t get me wrong; the people I did see saved my last shred of sanity, but needless to say, there was a lot of solo time.

Growing up, I was a pretty independent kid. I didn’t really get along with the kids I went to school with until I hit grade 6, and even then, I would typically spend long swaths of the summertime alone(with my little brother) on our family farm. From early on, my mother was the queen of “use your imagination” and “find something to entertain yourself with”, so by the time I hit middle school, I had worked my imagination like a muscle. It was the basis of keeping myself entertained, and after the mass quantities of books I consumed, their extended worlds became an all-encompassing experience. Whether it was making bows out of twigs and baling twine, sketching and trying to remake the costumes described for Halloween, or trying to cook meals mentioned by the characters, I engaged with creative play much past the age where it was socially acceptable. I was a weird kid, but after a while, you start to notice everyone around you looking down on the way you engage with the world- and when it starts to come from your friends, you eventually make a choice between something you enjoy, and engaging with the social structures of teenagehood. So I let the worlds, and the associated play, fade to memory as I attempted to conquer challenges like Mean Chemistry Teachers and Frenemies.

But then Covid happened. I was alone, removed from the social facades, with my only peer contact coming from a digital group of weirdos I adored from my time in Scotland. So, when one of them proposed we put together a weekly TTRPG, or tabletop role-play game, I was ready to say yes to just about anything that would afford consistent social interaction with people I cared about.

It wasn’t initially natural to engage in imaginative play the way I had growing up. Despite feeling secure with my friends, it was tough to wrap my head around playing a pretend character, alone, in my childhood bedroom, *gasp* out loud. So I drew up a character that wasn’t entirely unlike myself, or the version of myself I wanted to be, had I not been in lockdown. Joy, my character, was a similar translation of myself as her name was of my own. A bit more open, a bit more fun, a bit more adventurous, a bit more self-assured, she represented the kind of person I wanted to be: unafraid. Being a fantasy world, she also had a talking pet bear who had a minor in Russian philosophy, and poison ivy-esque plant powers(less attainable, but a girl can dream).

Our friend group, known in the gaming space as a ‘party’, started as nearly all of these stories do; strangers with a willingness to be a little weird, a bit more open, and a bit more creative than most of us had been since we were kids. We argued about gold and resurrection potions. We battled mythical beasts. We did a LOT of shopping in the little town. We mourned together; the death of a friend’s character in a fight, even if the friend didn’t leave the group, was heartbreaking and held a gravitas and communal feeling of failure to ensure her safety I never thought possible. All across continents and time zones, via discord and theatre of the mind, without any of us sitting at the same table. Throughout our campaign, we got to know each other’s characters, each other as people, and ourselves a hell of a lot more.

By now, you’re probably screaming at me to get to the point.

We played that campaign for three years. I played Joy for three years, and in that time, I was able to explore friendships, alliances, disagreements, and debates through the veil of someone with a little more confidence and a lot more willingness to fail in an environment that held consequences and gravity, yet was safe. I relearned how to imagine! We put together strategic plans of attack and coordinated our strengths and weaknesses to best defeat The Bad Guy, and I learned more about working in a team in those sessions than any group project or sport has ever taught me. I remembered how to be goofy, to engage with plotlines for pure entertainment and the opportunity to be just a little bit more weird. I learned how to disagree with people I respected and maintain my stance in opposition to someone I didn’t want to lose as a friend. I learned how to be open with discussions of content boundaries, topics we explored ranging across spirituality and religion, life beyond death, and addiction and substance abuse. I learned a lot from Joy; more than anything, I learned who I wanted to be now that I had grown up.

Dungeons and Dragons, specifically the group of friends I played with, provided an environment where I could engage with problems with less fear and engage with friends with more vulnerability than I had since I was a kid. In my time playing the game, I recognized the components of myself that I wanted to maintain even in a fantasy setting – namely, an earnest desire to support my friends’ successes and provide an environment where they felt cared about and could be honest with how they were feeling. And, obviously, I just really want a pet bear in any world.

Giving yourself permission to get a little silly with your friends can make you feel like a kid again, in the sense that it can make you feel assured of your place in the world and unafraid of making mistakes. These, like imagination, can be trained like a muscle, and don’t disappear when you stop the game or turn off your laptop. So play some make-believe! Pretend to be someone different for a few hours! Have fun for the sake of having fun, and give yourself an afternoon to disregard the facade of adulthood you’ve crafted for yourself. Your adult mask might just look a little more like you when you put it back on.

If you are interested, tabletop role-play games are a great place to start when reentering these worlds. Dungeons and Dragons is a classic for a reason, as the expansive and creative world provides mechanics for basically anything you can dream of, from Magic University (Strixhaven) to Ancient Greece but make it Dragons(Mythic Odysseys of Theros). However, games like Wanderhome provide a pastoral pastel backdrop with a lower barrier to entry, rules-wise, or games like Kids on Bikes, can fulfil your lifelong dream of solving a mystery as a teen sleuth.

If you’re not sure you want to dive directly into playing, you can check out Dimension 20 on YouTube, where improv comedians learn to play ttrpgs with vastly juxtaposing genres and settings. My favourite is Fantasy High, a traditional high fantasy world and adventure meeting a John Hughs-style America, chock full of teen angst, terrible flirting, and all the high school stereotypes.

No matter your choice, I hope you consider sitting in your imagination for a few minutes this week. Let yourself explore a book or TV show’s world in a way the media doesn’t. What do the side characters do off-screen? What kind of goods would be available in a book’s given ecosystem and trade environment? How did the main characters’ parents meet? Is there a better(or funnier) way of defeating the conflict? Try to consider the edges of the universe, and try to have fun for the sake of fun.