Sandra Wilson is the grand prize winning elder in the Legacy Project contest, an elder offering a piece of advice to the younger generation! She offered a valuable lesson on keeping a sense of play throughout your life.

Part of living is learning to accept and understand that things change. Someone once said that “If you do what you always did, then you will get what you always got.” So, if you want things to happen differently then it may take changing conceptions and life styles.

However, there are certain human needs that are constant. One of them is the concept of “play.” We learn to play without realizing that there may be difficulties that need to faced in times that lay ahead and it is going to be all lright. As children we can easily write down about 10 activities that we love to do and can often remember the last time that we participated. We enjoyed being with friends, roller skating, sledding, playing games with family, jumping rope, etc.  It is interesting that when adults are asked, they tend to have difficulty in listing 10 things that they love to do, much less when they last did the fun activity.

Play is an essential. Many times marriages end because couple tend to stop playing. Friendships end because folks get sidetracked with responsibilities and lose touch. Family life becomes mundane when the parents and children omit family chat around the dinner table that leads to listening and laughing. Their time to play as a family can define their love for one another and add to positive memories. Having fun through play remains with us from birth to death.

Stay tuned – we’re about to start announcing the winners of our contest for young people, who contributed a lesson they have learned from an elder.