For many of us who came through the MAPP program, the pull of Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky’s work was immediate. He gave us the word mattering, but it was not only the power of his ideas that drew us to him. It was the conviction and humility with which he delivered them, the questions he asked, his clever use of humor, and the unmistakable sense that his scholarship reflected how he actually lived.
There’s a peculiar kind of panic that arrives in adulthood when life stops making sense in the neat, linear way we were promised it would. You know the feeling. Your boss retires. Your industry shifts. Your marriage changes. Your children leave home. You lose your job. Or perhaps nothing catastrophic happens at all. You simply wake up one Tuesday morning, stare into your coffee, and realize the life you carefully built no longer fits.
If that’s you, you are probably not sitting on a swing smiling at—who is she smiling at?—while you journal your dreams for the next phase of your life. And the idea of play feels as useful as being told to "follow your passion" by someone with a trust fund.
After a recent Zoom workshop featuring several MAPPsters, that is, alumni of Penn’s Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program, I was asked to write this piece due to my being an addiction counselor and my “strengths of humor and playfulness.” I quickly said yes, a habit I’m trying to break, because it felt good to be asked. I briefly regretted saying yes when the guidelines were sent because they stipulated APA citations and references, which made me wish I had a pricing structure that said I’ll write anything for free unless it requires APA—in which case I charge $250,000.
When we think about play, many of us may think of childhood—of running around a playground, of a backyard sprinkler in the summertime, of toy trains and made-up stories of adventure. Few of us may even consider play’s pertinence in adulthood, but research indicates that play is not just a hallmark of childhood. It’s a necessity for well-being throughout our lives.
