Happy Friday! Continuing with our Words for Love series, today we’re all about ludus. This is a playful type of love that we experience in a wide range of relationships – parents and kids, kids playing with each other, people flirting, or my favorite, playing with your dog.
As someone who takes themselves Very Seriously, ludus is something I’ve had to learn to lean into. There’s a part of me that should have been a leading cast member of Grumpy Old Men. I like things ordered, quiet, with rules.
Then, my 20’s happened, with of those big and small tragedies that force you into that beautiful and inexplicable equilibrium between ”hey kiddo, it’s only life,” and, “my God, there is nothing more precious and important than right now.”
Papa Mendes
My dad is a ludus champion. You may have seen Papa Mendes on my Instagram from time to time, as he takes most of my photos and we spend a fair amount of time together. Some of my earliest memories are of him coming home from work, getting on his hands and knees on the living room carpet, and letting my sister and I sit on his back. We’d have a tour of the Wild West of our living room.
Can you imagine – he was the chief of surgical pathology of a hospital with four campuses across San Francisco. He worked long days. But there was something about ludus that he could tap into when he came home, even if just for a few minutes. I think that’s how you know it’s a form of love, when it transcends being just an emotion and becomes a force that gives you life.
And even today, he has a way of making me laugh through all of life’s disasters, a way of accepting them and at the same time saying, “isn’t life ridiculous and fun?”
Siciña
Yes, I’m absolutely that person who regularly takes selfies with their dog.
Animals have a great way of bringing out ludus as well. There is something about having a pet that demands a bit of goofiness, isn’t there? On days when I’m exhausted, my head and neck pain is relentless, and I feel really in the crapper, Sici still needs to play. She needs to play, like breathing. Then I’m the one on my hands and knees, throwing her kibble so she can pretend to hunt it, or chasing her around the apartment. She loves being chased.
It is instant medicine, instant joy, something so pure that I had long written off. Goofiness, I had somehow come to believe, was not for me. I am Very Serious.
In the past few years though, I’ve been forced into ludus. Circumstances and hardship have, perhaps paradoxically, steered me away from that rigorous part of myself that demands Total Order. Quite by accident, I now spend most of my time with people (or with Sici) who bring out that playful side of myself I had lost in chemistry books so long ago. Or maybe it wasn’t by accident, and it was the universe telling me, “hey, this is a way to live, too.”
The realization that being goofy is a form of love changed everything for me. Silliness is not a form of escaping responsibility, but a form of sharing life.
And here I am, starting a blog that talks about oversized sweaters and ridiculous faux fur jackets, for the pure joy of it. So much ludus here!
How do you experience ludus?
love
Stig
