A two-year-old named Shivoy knows something most adults have long forgotten — that play is not a reward for finishing work, it is the work itself. This is a meditation on what we lose when we grow up, and what quietly waits for us to return.
You might not know me… or perhaps you do!
Well, who knows anyone anyway… #deep
but this isn’t about me, this is about- Shivoy!
Shivoy is my two-year-old neighbour who often comes to my house to play. When I open the door, he rushes past everything and everyone and goes straight to my room to my musical instruments. For someone who cannot even spell harmonium, he somehow finds his way to them every single day. His mother often tries to take him back home, but his tiny body resists with all its strength. In that moment, it feels as if his whole being is saying “let me stay here a little longer”. To be with those instruments is his play. And that is his work. At two, Shivoy does not yet have the language to say what he feels or wants. The toy becomes the medium through which he communicates. When he presses a key or taps on an instrument, something is happening inside him. Something is being expressed. Doing is taking place.
We call it “just playing,” but if we look closely, it is serious psychological work. Children often speak through play long before they speak through words. This makes me wonder about something- what happens to play when we grow up?
Somewhere along the way, work and play become two completely separate things in our minds. Work becomes something serious, productive, and often exhausting. Play becomes something childish, almost indulgent. As if enjoying what we do is suspicious. As if fun belongs only to childhood.
When we hit a socio-culturally determined age, it sometimes feels like we are expected to quietly swallow our emotions and begin the serious business of life.
Work hard. Be sensible. Be mature.
And of course, the sentence most of us have heard at some point: “Don’t act like a child.” It is said so casually, but it almost feels like an insult not just to the person being told, but to children themselves. As if being someone who has needs, impulses, and curiosity is something embarrassing.
But children remind us of an inherited absentia.
They remind us that human beings need spaces where they can simply be. Play is one of those spaces.
In early life, care is experienced through continuity. A caregiver being there again and again helps a child slowly build a sense that the world is reliable. The infant may not need the caregiver every second, but their presence in the background matters deeply. Absence can suddenly change the infant’s world. It can feel like opening the fridge expecting food and finding it empty.
The infant’s limitation is not the absence of feeling, but the absence of language. And so, love and care become a kind of psychic nutrition. Somehow it feels like a subscription model. One can avail all the services of being taken care of till a certain age. Not to say that being taken care of is a removal of accountability one should grasp. But in the moments of confusion and frustration, play becomes the bridge between inner feelings and the outside world. It is the space where fantasy, curiosity, frustration, and joy can all exist safely.
In play, a child experiments with reality.
If we were to skip the laps of time & repairs, if Shivoy were constantly stopped from touching the instruments, he might slowly become an “ideal” compliant child. The kind who listens immediately. The kind who does not insist. But compliance often comes at a looming cost.
The instrument, his current way of communicating might disappear. And with it, his spontaneous gesture. The world often celebrates compliant children. They are easy to manage. They do not disturb routines. But inside, something important can quietly go underground- an authentic self. Literature says, when a child’s true self is allowed space to develop, it becomes a powerful buffer against life’s difficulties. When our internal world is allowed to exist freely, external reality becomes easier to face because it resonates with something inside us.
Which brings us back to adulthood.
How often do we find ourselves in similar roles? Obedient. Responsible. Functional. But sometimes unsure of what we truly want.
Many adults slowly lose access to play, not necessarily toys, but the spirit of play. Curiosity, exploration, creativity, and doing something simply because it feels alive.
Play for adults might look different. It might be music, cooking without a recipe, dancing badly in your room, writing, painting, or even having a conversation that wanders without purpose. Play is spontaneity in an hyper organised world.
Play is not the opposite of work. Often, it is what makes work feel meaningful. The question then is not whether adults should play. Perhaps the question is- how did we become so uncomfortable with it?
Sometimes, watching a two-year-old stubbornly protect his time with a harmonium can remind us of something we forgot a long time ago. That, perhaps, play never really disappears. Perhaps, it simply waits for us to return.
That was my playful attempt at getting to know you. I’m Shruti Garg, psychoanalytic psychotherapist at Lost & Found Psychotherapy, who finds comfort sometimes in quiet corners & on other days, among people. Coming from the field of psychoanalysis and classical music, attuning to the smallest of emotion feels like a home and probably the only way to be.
