chapter 4. PLAY #1

on a wild mountain stream and dangerous play

Water moves without a preconceived plan. It conforms to the bed - the narrower it gets, the wilder the flow and the swirling. 

The text of this post has been translated from Dutch to English with DeepL. It will be manually edited and streamlined soon

4. Play

THE IMAGE of two trigrams: Mountain above, Water below. That looks like a wild mountain stream. Tempestuous, clear, unpredictable, dangerous.

Richard Wilhelm translated the title of this chapter as Youthful Folly. An untamed mountain stream as an image for a youth full of stubbornness and rebellion. Other I Ching translations use titles such as Youth, Immaturity and Youthful Inexperience.

Youth and play are each other's synonyms. If you take away a child's play, you deny his youth. And, continuing to play all your life means preserving your youth. For this chapter, I choose as title: Play.

Mountain

Water

Be honest, what would we have done without play? Without play, how would we have gotten to know and understand each other? Play is imagination - today I am fireman, you an animal doctor or rather an explorer? Who is Batman and who is the villain. Slip into the skin of ... and without needing anything but the imagination, the adventure can begin!

With play comes humor and with humor comes relativity. Do you dare to play? An instant time machine is at your disposal. Back to an earlier time or with a giant leap to a time to come. It is all free, it is child's play.

Every child knows the wonderful game of imitation. Walk and dance like your idol and even if you can't sing very well yet, you already know how it feels. Today you are an astronaut, tomorrow you will win a gold medal just like that and you can decide for what.

Unhampered by conventions and an oppressive straitjacket, play reveals hidden shortcuts and creates desire paths. Without play, how could we discover what else is possible? While thinking you see the limitation, while playing there is always a new beginning. 

The hexagram of Play is an inversion of that of the previous chapter, Beginning. This time, these paired chapters are not opposites, but follow and complement each other. It is not necessary to know the game to participate, starting will suffice.

In the Netherlands you will not find mountain streams, but not too long ago the Vecht valley was a wild and rugged area. A river course full of baroque meanders, flanked by hills of wind-blown sand. A little farther north and south were unfriendly bog swamps. Roads were scarce - in fact, the river itself offered the best transportation. To cross the river, a single bridge, otherwise some ferries and fordable shallows. Here and there an inn with names like 'The Hungry Wolf' and 'The Black Horse.' For the traveler who had crossed the wild country and was approaching the city of Zwolle, the inn 'The Happiness' awaited there. Image from the Cultuur-Historische Atlas van de Vecht.