The Possibilities of Figurative Play
If you have ever found yourself caught up in the play, been played or mixed up in a game you didn’t choose, you’ll know what it feels like to have someone else making up the rules. The whole narcissus-hero template, that most people live their lives through, is riddled with games. The inertia of these games keeps us playing by the rules. Breaking free, choosing beyond the template, or even just seeing what else is possible, requires a counterintuitive move; you have open yourself to the nature of play itself.
So, let’s play and see where it takes us. An everyday occurrence, like meeting someone new, offers a ready example. The template makes it pretty easy by reducing the possibilities. The new person has to fit one of the pre-existing categories: a resource, a reward, a bystander or some kind of monster. Actually, bystanders are just resources ‘on standby’, so there are really only three choices. Wait, rewards are resources you can use right now, so there are only two choices: monsters (who will get in your way) or resources (who will help you get on your way). Don’t believe it? Try not putting people in either one of those categories. I did. It was easy once I had a new metaphor.
When I started this series, I paired “crossroads” and “people” just to see what might happen. I spent several weeks listening for the crossroads in each person with whom I interacted. Some alternative roads were enticing, some utterly tedious and others quite titillating. I didn’t take any of them, I just considered a future down the road that each person was signposting. It was fun! No-one became a resource or a monster, they just showed the possibilities.
Then, not entirely by chance, I met up someone I hadn’t seen for 20 years. I was well disciplined in listening for the crossroads by this stage. As the conversation unfolded itself, I realised we were both being presented with, not just a single lane crossroad, but a mammoth intersection on a major freeway. She wasn’t being categorised as someone to help me on my way (a resource), what opened up was a completely different way of going. One I would have missed, had I been trying to categorise her as a resource.
Switching points of reference might show this more clearly. Another, common experience is that of change. It’s the one we feature in the video. We could argue that we don’t simply know change through the metaphor of the seasons. It’s not a conceptual or theoretical process. We experience change as seasonal. We say, “the winds of change are blowing”, “things have turned cold” or “it’s heating up in here.” This is important. We create change as if it were seasonal and live according to the seasonal version of it. We look for the signs of shift, new ideas blossoming, bearing fruit and then we await the decay and dormant period. We create change as if it had an internal organic impulse to entirely transform as does a caterpillar when it becomes a butterfly; and then live according to change created that way.
Don’t believe it? Consider Beauty and Beast. That story is all about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. And yes, the gendered message is ‘just keep loving him girls, he will show his beauty to you one day’. But it’s a trap! If you are desperately loving a narcissist, hoping some magic organic process will kick in so he or she turns into the butterfly you crave, you will be bitterly disappointed.
No matter how long you sit at a T-Junction loving its possibilities, it will not turn into a butterfly. You have to choose. And to choose you have to see it for what it is. And to see it for what it is means you need different figurative devices. Because, not all change is organic, not all change is choosing, not all change is rising from the ashes like a phoenix.
Stick with me for a moment longer, how many people do you know who are stuck inside relationships that are miserable because the beast emerged and never catalysed (back) into loveable butterfly? How many workplaces do you know where there are beasts in charge and people are protecting those beasts by their actions? I’m not attempting to apportion the blame here, what I am noticing is that our social structures (divorce laws, social mores, judgements) are built around the assertion that we must live by the rules of the narcissist-hero myth. Our industrial processes and laws make it difficult to prevent bullies from rising to the top because they are constructed around the assumptions of that same template. The rules of the game. These rules sustain the beasts.
You can’t see how dumb it is to sit at a T-Junction, in the hope it will become a glorious winged angel, if the butterfly metaphor is the only way you have of experiencing the world. Possibilities emerge for us as we shift our point of view. Figurative play is exactly that – a way of shifting our point of view so more possibilities show up. And when they do, the rules of the game become increasingly apparent to us and often, seem increasingly dumb.
So, what is the nature of the play?
We are always in play
The rules of the game are made through the figurative devices chosen in the past
Those rules, and devices are only one way of experiencing our existence
Changing the device shifts how we experience our existence, simultaneously showing up new possibilities and exposing the rules of the game.
Adopting a new device might show a situation for what it is, thus releasing us from slavery to a false premise
Releasing possibilities does not obligate us to choose them
Every person we meet, may be a crossroads however there is no mandate to take the turn. If we don’t creatively uncover the possibilities, the only future available to us was created by choices made in the past. That’s what this series is all about, uncovering the possibilities for our becoming.
Follow the figurative play series on Instagram. Make it a regular part of your day. Do it with friends, at work, or as part of your daily exercise. The possibility of release is always just in your pocket.
A quick introduction to one kind of figurative play.