The Delight of Not Having To Get It Right
“I think we have a problem Andrew. Can you help us?”
I walked over to one of the groups that were playing a warm up game for the ‘improvisation’ class.
It was a group of twenty young people aged 9-11 years old. The game we were playing was a simple word association game. The ‘rules’ are, I say a word, any word and you say the first word that comes into your head. I might say ‘dog,’ you might say ‘bone’, you say ‘bone’ so I say ‘skeleton’, I say ‘skeleton’ you say ‘spooky’ and so on. And so after a brief explanation of the game, everyone had divided into pairs and gotten under way.
Until now. As I sat with them, I couldn’t help notice that one of the girls was a bit teary.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘She can’t do it’, said her partner.
One of the aims of the game is to bypass that ‘logical’ censor in your brain and access that more ‘creative’ part of our brain that is more ‘associative’ by nature. This part of our brain, often thought of as the right brain, delights in play. And if it’s given some ‘open road’ it can work at lightening speed with almost unfathomable imagination and the commensurate adaptability.
But at this particular moment, the ‘open road’ was more like a ‘traffic jam.’
After, re-explaining the rules, I settled into play.
So’, I said ‘if I say sun’, what’s the first word you think of?’
The girl shrugged.
“I’m not sure,” she replied.
“I might think of moon… or shine … or hot … or even a cloud,” I coaxed.
“I don’t know,” she said.
When I see someone ‘stuck’ there’s a question I often ask,
‘What are you afraid of right now?’
A tear rolled down her cheek.
“Getting it wrong…”
And there it was, a child too afraid of playing in case she got it ‘wrong.’
Let’s think about that for a moment… what should be the most natural thing in the world for a child to do? Play, maybe? If I was playing this game myself and someone said the word ‘child’ I would probably answer ‘play’ such is the strength of the association. We even have an expression for it – when a task is easy and fun, we tend to call it, ‘child’s play.’
But surely this is an isolated anecdote, right?
Nope. I have been teaching young people for over twenty-five years and children suffering the pressure of having to ‘get it right’ has not eased one bit.
“What if I said you can’t get it wrong?”, I offered.
She viewed me suspiciously, ‘Really?’
And so we began again.
“Dog” I said.
“Cat.”
“Food.”
“Hamburger.”
“Water.”
“Fish.”
And then… a smile. I got up from the group and viewed the class playing. There were moments of pause and hesitation followed by flurries of associations and then explosions of giggling delight as some of them were surprised and amused by the creative impulses of their own brains.
And that’s the thing we take away from kids [ and ourselves] when we insist that we must ‘get it right.’ We take away delight. In impro, we say ‘don’t get it right, get it done.’ Delight in the process.
Delight – what an awesome gift!
Have a delightful day!!!
Andrew