Playfulness

What Playfulness means in a partnership

While waiting for the rain to ease, you draw a small face in the condensation on the inside of the window. Your partner adds an eyebrow. A bead of condensation runs through the drawing and gives it a nose reaching almost to its chin. You widen the eyes to suit the surprise. Rain streaks the outside of the glass while, inside, you make the same ridiculous thing together.

Playfulness makes room for a pleasure both people can join, change or let pass. A shared joke can turn a task into something you recognize as yours together. Its success depends on participation rather than performance: the other person need not laugh to prove affection. Small absurdities, familiar rituals and invented characters can carry the humor without making either partner its victim. Enjoyment can be brief and still be worth having.

Finding the balance

In ordinary life

A familiar journey

Invent a harmless name for an oddly shaped landmark if your partner enjoys the game.

A shared message

Send a small observation that invites a response without demanding an immediate performance.

Nearby virtues, different work

Gentleness

Gentleness attends to how a gesture is received. Playfulness uses that consideration to make room for shared lightness.

Recognizing a counterfeit

Mockery counterfeits Playfulness when one person must absorb embarrassment to preserve the mood. A private joke also needs reconsidering when its subject stops enjoying it. Letting a joke end can be part of sustaining the pleasure of joking together.

Cultivating Playfulness

• Notice the amusement already available in an object or task.
• Make invitations easy to accept, adapt or decline.

Try it today

Offer one small, reversible joke or variation during a shared moment. Let your partner develop it or let it pass, and stop if it is unwelcome.

Questions worth returning to

• What did the other person contribute to the pleasure?
• Was there room for the joke to end without anyone being blamed?

Choose your practice

These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.

Quotations and further reading

Seven readings, one for each day. All remain available here. Historical arguments and fictional dialogue are identified in their source notes.

1. You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else.

   Robert Louis Stevenson · Virginibus Puerisque, and Other Papers
   “Virginibus Puerisque”, I;
   Robert Louis Stevenson · 1897 Chatto & Windus edition transcription; Project Gutenberg 386

   Stevenson finds a pleasure in shared jokes that solitary reading cannot supply: someone else helps make the moment funny.

2. I should never like scolding any one else so well; and that is a point to be thought of in a husband.

   George Eliot · Middlemarch
   Chapter LXXXVI, Mary’s affectionate joke about Fred; CHAPTER LXXXVI.;
   Mary Garth · H. M. Caldwell, New York and Boston; undated imprint in captured transcription

   Speaking to her father, Mary jokes about the familiarity of her attachment to Fred. The surrounding conversation also names his good temper and growing responsibility.

3. Praises, instead of ‘bangs’!!—consider that it might be worse!

   Elizabeth Barrett Browning · The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. II
   Letters, volume II, postmarked 28 April 1846; Monday Evening. [Post-mark, April 28, 1846.];
   Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Elizabeth Barrett Barrett in the correspondence) · Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1899, second impression; correspondence 1845–1846

   After praising his dramatic dialogue, Barrett teases Browning about having to endure compliments. The joke makes room for shared pleasure in his work.

4. Don't laugh, but your nose is such a comfort to me …

   Louisa May Alcott · Little Women
   Chapter XLIV, My Lord and Lady;
   Amy Laurence · Little, Brown and Company; captured imprint includes copyright notices 1868, 1869, 1880 and 1896; exact printing undated

   Amy’s fondness takes an unexpectedly particular form. Laurie enjoys the unusual compliment, and both find pleasure in the joke.

5. It is a game of giving and withholding, revealing and screening again; some smiles and some little shyness, and some sweet useless struggles. This love between you and me is simple as a song.

   Rabindranath Tagore · The Gardener
   Poem 16;
   Lyric speaker · Captured English title heading 1915; translated by the author from Bengali
   Rabindranath Tagore’s own English translation from Bengali

   The lovers’ small exchanges have value without needing to accomplish anything. The poem keeps affection light and mutual.

6. … though he had a strong sense of humour, it never appeared to diminish his respect for the people who amused him.

   Elizabeth Gaskell · Wives and Daughters
   Roger’s visit to Molly at the Miss Brownings’; CHAPTER XIV. MOLLY FINDS HERSELF PATRONIZED.;
   Narrator, describing Roger Hamley · Illustrated text with George du Maurier illustrations; print imprint not established by captured title text

   Molly notices that Roger’s amusement leaves respect intact. The observation offers a useful measure for affectionate teasing.

7. In spite of her laugh and the little pressure of mockery on his arm, he would not resign his belief …

   Virginia Woolf · Night and Day
   Katharine and Ralph leave her family’s house together; CHAPTER XXXIV;
   Narrator, describing Katharine and Ralph · Project Gutenberg 1245 transcription; print imprint not identified

   Katharine gently teases Ralph’s idealized view of her home. Affection leaves room for their different ways of seeing it.

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