I was a busy kid with tons of energy to burn. Play was my release mechanism. Outside was my playground. Building. Exploring. Sports. Always trying many different new things. Honing my skills. Getting to know myself through recreation. No pressure. All in fun. Entertaining myself using creativity and imagination. Some of my best childhood memories are of me and my friends playing cops and robbers on our bikes and long winter afternoons playing pond hockey. All unsupervised. No agenda. Rules made up as we went. Trailblazers of sorts. I learned how to ride a bike on my own, by trial and error without instruction or guidance. No courses or coaches. We still made it work. Forced resourcefulness. Free play is quite rare nowadays. Nonexistent almost. Everything is so very structured, endlessly organized. Kids just need to show up and follow instructions. To be honest, proper skills development was never something that we really thought about back in the day. We were just having fun. Nothing else. Sometimes the worse thing that can happen to kids is that they happen to be very good at doing something that they really enjoy. Especially if it’s something that society puts a whole lot of importance on such as sports. Natural talent. It should never be wasted right? Once this potential is uncovered, the game or sport that they love suddenly becomes very serious. Training programs. Extra practices. High level coaching. Ultra competitive. Structure. Discipline. At what point does more become less? At what point do we start obliterating the fun?
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