One afternoon, while my friend was exploring my tablet’s pen, she said, “Let’s play,” while drawing a hasty tic-tac-toe grid on my notetaking app—no tutorial, no settings to configure—just spontaneous play.
We took turns marking Xs and Os, neither of us keeping score. The simplicity felt childish, so my adult self started to scream inside my head, “How childish for you to engage in such games.” However, part of me wanted to continue because it felt like I was rediscovering something I’d lost.
When my friend felt like it was time to step up our game, she thought, “Why not play Hangman?” So we did. As I watched her finger trace the blank spaces for letters, a memory surfaced—my mother had just bought us our first home computer, and I used to play HangARoo on it with my sister.
First, we agreed on the category we’d like to have, and then each of us thought about a word or phrase that the other should guess by suggesting a letter. The stick man gets hanged if one guesses a wrong letter for the sixth time, and that means it’s the other’s turn to guess.
We didn’t impose strict rules (like time constraints) and this flexibility enabled us to enjoy each other’s company and the moment. No notifications interrupted us, no deadlines loomed—just two friends playing like children again.
When it was time to go home (like how playing with friends always end when I was young) and when I had the time to think about the kind of mental stimulation our free play gave me, I realized what made this afternoon feel so precious. Growing up, I’ve been working around so many rules that I had forgotten what free play is like—to be just present and enjoy the moment without structure, without optimization, without purpose beyond joy itself.
As I put my tablet away later that evening, I wondered how many other simple pleasures I’d forgotten to make room for in my “carefully scheduled life,” as my sister would describe it.
I think I have become too rigid that even simple joys from unstructured activities feel sinful.
jessa 