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If you search for "silly" on this site you'll find a virtual plethora of posts devoted, in one way or another, to silliness. If you happen to search for "serious" you'll find slightly less of a plethora, virtually speaking, but sizably serious, nonetheless.
For this post, however, I decided to focus neither on serious nor on silly, but on the and part. Take a few minutes to listen to the story on Serious and Silly playing Hide and Seek: from my CD Recess for the Soul.
And now, a clip from a discussion about that story.
Though I was quick to respond, that insight from the audience member in which he says "It seems to me that Serious' sense of duty is pretty much where it has its self-esteem" could have easily generated a far more lengthy response.
First of all, simply attributing to Serious the need for "self-esteem" is profound enough. It means that, at least for that one person, Serious has a strong enough sense of "self" to require esteem. And, obviously, Serious would require that, merely to take himself seriously enough. I'm not sure if the same is true for Silly.
But what is true for both is that one needs the other, completely. And that one, without the other, is simply incomplete, unfinished, broken. The "and" that connects them is central to their very existence. To play together, they must each act as if the other were, well, other. But in playing together, and only in playing together, can each achieve fruition. The connection makes them each possible.
This takes us back to Buber's I and Thou (PDF)—it is neither the I nor the Thou that is central to the understanding of the relationship between the human and the divine, but the and—for only in the and can we see both.
Everything that I've written about play and games, fun and playfulness exists in that particular and, in the relationship, expressed or implied, between self and other, body and soul, life and death. These are all notes. You have to play in the and to hear the music.
