2.4 Get yourself a bad attitude
Shoulds are powerful and tricky. They can sneak into a good thing and slowly but surely take the heart out of it.
For millennia, all through our hunter–gatherer days, we humans lived by shoulds. In our small bands and tribes, there were things we knew we should do and things we knew we shouldn’t do. We lived by a set of rules, but we were okay with them because they worked for us. They kept us surviving and thriving.
But in our current era, shoulds can be out of control. They can be the exact opposite of what we need. And I definitely don’t want any shoulds getting inside my relationship with primal play, which could sound like this…
Rich, you should get yourself in a playful mood this morning before you start your writing, and you should hold onto that mood and play your way through the day, and you should, because primal play is the best thing ever and it’s working for you and it’s fun and you should do it, and there’s something wrong with you if you don’t.
This is what I call a noble should…
You should do this because it’s such a good, good thing.
Noble shoulds are the worst kind. They’re the hardest to say no to, but the ones we most need to say no to.
I love primal play, but it’s not holy. It’s just something I love. So whenever I sense a should sneaking into my relationship with it, I declare a state of emergency and go grab myself a bad attitude and put it to work…
To hell with you, Primal Play. Don’t you tell me what to do. Don’t you dare.
Except I’m not really talking to primal play, I’m talking to the should that’s gotten inside it. So…
I’m doing an exorcism.
And sometimes I take on a bad attitude about primal play, because…
I want to refresh our relationship.
If I feel myself getting habituated to primal play, if the thrill is gone, if we’re getting lazy and lackluster with each other, I take that seriously, because a weak relationship is susceptible to shoulds.
So then I personify Primal Play and have an in-depth conversation with it…
This isn’t working for me, not like I want it to. So I’m done with you and I really mean it—unless we can get the fun back.
Which is like pushing the reset button on a relationship…
It’s like when you’ve got trouble with your partner, and the two of you have a very serious talk and it starts working, and you find yourselves shifting, bantering with each other and saying sweet, affectionate things back and forth to each other, and now you’re playing and you’ve got your groove back.
That’s how it is with me and Primal Play. So far, this has always worked, knock on pixels. And I hope this kind of conversation, serious but turning playful, works for you, too.
Write Mad.
The sociologist C. Wright Mills advised sociologists to read passages written by grade–B sociologists until you get so mad about what they are saying that you explode onto the page with your own passion and smarts.
If you write fiction, you can take 15–30 minutes to read some really bad writing with purple prose and clumsy sounding sentences, preferable by someone making six figures with their gruesome products and get mad enough to take a stand for your own writing and burst into a rush of writing.
If you write nonfiction, there are plenty of happy–talk, easy–step gurus who can drive you into a state of antagonistic opposition from which you can erupt into your deeper, richer, more powerful teachings.
Write Crazy
Break the spell of mild–mannered, all–too–polite, reasonable rationality, and go nuts, get wild. Venture into looneyness. Be a blasphemer. Get outrage. Not that you’ll put your crazy stuff in print necessarily, but it’s amazing what this strategy will let loose from your subconscious that you will absolutely want to put in print and maybe even feature.
PS:
Just for fun here’s a 3-minute video in which Ricky Gervais tells how he got a bad attitude about a school assignment when he was 13 or 14 and learned his most enduring lesson about writing.
