Purpose Vs Play Vs Peace: Plentiful Ingredients For A Pleasant Life
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Reading time: 3 mins
Summary: One lens I have for life - there are three types of time: Purpose, Play and Peace (rest). In a normal week I try to do 5 days of Purpose, 1 day of Play and 1 day of Peace.
Equations for Purpose vs Peace vs Play
Sometimes happiness comes from serving others. Sometimes happiness comes from being good to yourself. Other times happiness is the absence of any worry / stress!
For me, done well, work can give you purpose.
I think it’s possible to have happiness in all parts of your life, but that the type of happiness might be very different. This doesn’t mean that I think all times should be happy. In fact, I don’t think being happy all the time is optimal. There is no north without south, there is no happiness without sadness. Sadness isn’t necessarily badness. Amongst other things, done well, I think sadness can help you appreciate life more fully!
Jingle 1: Variety is the spice of life, that is why you want all the ‘p’ types of time ;)!
Jingle 2: A life without seriousness is frivolousness. A life with only seriousness is silliness.
Purpose vs Play vs Peace: they are sometimes opposites
In some respects relaxing well (peace) is the opposite of work (purpose).
One lens:
Work = There are things that have to be done by a certain time and above a certain level of quality
Relax = Can do things, but don’t have to do anything. And who cares about quality?
I think you want to be good at being ‘on’ (eg work mode), good at being ‘off’ (eg peace mode), good a having plans (eg work mode), good at being spontaneous (eg play mode), good at being responsible (eg work mode), good at being silly (eg play mode).
This blog I wrote relates to multiple modes: I contain multitudes: one should have multiple modes