The uselessness is the point: A resolution for play

A few weeks ago, Outside Magazine asked me to make a fitness prediction for 2024. Here is what I said, in something of a fugue state:

Everyone is lonely. We are starved for human connection and contact. We are starved for reasons to go outside. We are all withering and calcifying, physically. The natural answer is, of course, stay with me, PvP zones.

What is a PvP zone, you ask? PvP zones, in open-world video games, are designated areas where players are able to directly interface with—OK, attack—one another. I do not mean for there to be actual violence, obviously. But a place for adults to engage in relatively unstructured play? We need it, now more than ever. I see you shaking your head, but that only proves how badly you need to engage with your fellow humans in a PvP zone.

You may think I’m joking, but I am entirely serious. I take my dog to the dog park, and then I sit there roiling with jealousy for 45 minutes. How is it that we have a place for her, a dog, to get up to shenanigans with her fellows, while the only acceptable thing for me to do outside is sit on a bench? It’s preposterous.

I, we, have basically all the same needs as a dog for play and exercise and, most importantly, fun with others. We are grown adults. We should, theoretically, be allowed to do whatever we want. Why is “goofing around in parks” the provenance of only dogs and children? Why are we not allowed to do some good old-fashioned light roughhousing, to chase one another in and out of trees, just because it’s fun and funny only if you, very crucially, don’t think about why or what for at all?

If you are thinking “You’re just describing jiu jitsu class, or recreational softball”: sort of. But the most crucial aspect of the PvP zone is that it’s structureless, a place where no one loses and skill doesn’t matter. I don’t think anyone would argue that many of us think entirely too much now. Perhaps the solution to all of our ills is to just designate an area of our parks where it is acceptable to go up to another person you don’t know and say “tag, you are it” and then run away. PvP zones: It could, and should, and by my estimation will, happen.

I stand by it.

I admit that, as a human in the world, I suffer from a certain lack of imagination. I understand that achievement and wealth (even exorbitant wealth, just “freedom from fear of destitution”)[^1] are kind of hollow goals. I’ve surely been chided by some three thousand self-helpy wellness posts that no one on their deathbed wishes they’d spent more time at work or on their phones in order to acquire more fancy objects. I’ve seen the fridge magnets that say “the best things in life are free,” that “money can’t buy happiness.” But still all of this “wisdom” left my brain kind of hollow, because, what exactly is it that I’m supposed to think about, if not work, if not clawing at some kind of stability and security, hoping to finally buy some stuff that doesn’t fall apart the first time I use it?

A book I read recently called Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism addresses exactly this problem. Not only have we seen that achievement and the acquisition of stuff doesn’t save anyone. Though it temporarily indulges our competitive instincts and some abstract need for security, it leaves people miserable, ultimately.

So then, how should a person be? What constitutes a “rich, full life” if not being literally monetarily rich, if not having a big house literally full of stuff?