Play

Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:

“Life is a game, play it.”

-Mother Teresa

The snow gently started to fall as the five of us made our way back to the cabin. We were all pooped.

Unbeknownst to Chris but knownst to Micah and me, we crouched down in a football 3-point stance and prepared to pounce like a lion on an unknowing gazelle. Suddenly, Micah let out a roar and the two of us took off at full force, gang tackled Chris to the ground, and snow wrestled until we were both satisfied with the amount of white power we got into his face.

This is my life for this one weekend out of the year. It’s the weekend of potato guns, snow wrestling, fort building, tree falling, bonfiring, grilling and peeing outdoors. It’s Men’s Retreat.

We have never had a formal program. We are a bunch of friends who get together at Chris’ cabin sometime in February in the middle-of-nowhere northern Michigan, where most sane people avoid because of the snow and frigid temperatures. It is this weather that drives us out to play.

Play.

That’s what we do. Play. There is no other time of the year where we act so juvenile, immature and young. The last time I went out into the snow and just played was at last year’s Men Retreat. The time before that I probably was not a teenager yet. As guys, we were all very comfortable with each other in the cabin. We cook our own meals, throw fits when we lose at a four-hour-long Risk game, heckle each other, create competitions with bodily noises and are just very authentic, real, honest and sometimes raw. The same guys that I shot a potato gun with are the same guys I had a gun control conversation with. They are the same guys who listened to my struggles in life right now and who offered their advice when I needed it, even when I didn’t ask.

There are some who would read this and wonder if we also sang Kumbaya. For the record, we didn’t. We’re not weird.

An event like this shouldn’t be weird, either.

I have no idea when it happened, but at some point in my life, I grew up. The days of running out in the snow and wrestling around stopped suddenly and without any real reason. The honest, innocent conversations pretty much ceased. The importance of rest and relaxation gave way to paying the bills, finding a job and being a productive member of society. While nobody ever told me I couldn’t do it anymore, the idea of sleepovers and staying up till God-knows-when in the morning with your friends just to see which of the last two players standing won Risk turned into a thing that kids do. Sharing a bed – Hell, sharing a bedroom – was out of the question. Adults had private, personal lives which were not the business of anybody else. There were walls and bubbles that we were all supposed to make and respect. We were inside of them. Nobody came in and nobody came out, and they certainly didn’t make themselves vulnerable to one another. And to play? No, adults never play.

Well, this one did. No, it’s not abnormal. Whether you care to acknowledge it or not, there is a deep passion inside of each of us that I can only call the Human Connection. It supersedes Facebook, Twitter, TV, Facetime, a phone conversation or YouTube. It is the power of being with your family, your best friends, your confidant or significant other and just being real. Just for a moment. Just long enough to tear down the arbitrary barriers that we collectively put up as a society so that we really experience life.

I’m on an airplane now heading back from Michigan to Kansas. I work tomorrow. I need to do laundry. There are bills to pay. I’m gearing up for a construction project on my house. You know, adult stuff. I’ll do all of these things as cheerfully as I can, knowing that none are my life but only a means by which I make my living. They are merely the things that I do so that I can actually live life the way it’s meant to be.

Not with barriers or expectations or masquerades, but with honesty, humility and, well,

Play.

…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!