Building with Legos

    In his book tremendous trifles G. K. Chesterton writes two essays on the believability--or rather, the necessity of believing in fairy tales. He was quite convincing as well as funny and concisely eloquent, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I read "A Toy Theatre" and saw this thought in connection with the reason adults do not play with toys: "The reason is that playing with toys takes so very much more time and trouble than anything else. Playing as children mean playing is the most serious thing in the world [...] We have enough strength for politics and commerce and art and philosophy; we have not enough strength for play." Farther in the page he writes, "Take the case of bricks. If you publish a book tomorrow in twelve volumes (it would be just like you) on 'The Theory and Practice of European Architecture', your work may be laborious, but it is fundamentally frivolous. It is not serious as the work of a child piling one brick on the other is serious; for the simple reason that if your book is a bad book no one will ever be able to ultimately and entirely to prove to you that it is a bad book. Whereas if his balance of bricks is a bad balance of bricks, it will simply tumble down."
    I confess I was filled with a burning desire to write something brilliant or make something childish or do something  that proved I was either wise or a child still (instead of a adult twenty-two year old). I didn't; I did what a mature adult would do and went and weeded the back patio/basketball court. I cleared one entire square (there are four or five that need attention), then set my work down, said "this is ridiculous!" inside, and went and got out the (extensive) family collection of legos. I then spent about an hour seriously building a small, tall, spacious (as in, containing more air than support) structure with an empty ground floor, a second "floor" (double row blue platform and a pillar two dots behind it) with two men on it, a third gold, black, blue, and white "floor" with a black horse on it, and to pillars reaching up from that with a lion's flag on it. It was even from all sides, the walls each had their own color on both sides with no interruptions, and each block was carefully placed. It was so much fun, and I now have a strong desire to build a tall, unevenly-floored, perfectly semetrical, color-coordinated large maze of legos. I think I shall, soon, or not so very soon...it does not matter so long as I do it. And I would upload a picture of my highly non-impressive structure if I could; but I cannot, because I don't know how. And that doesn't matter so much, does it? :) But I played as a child.
    Do you remember the blog post I recently wrote, about "Release"? I think I found something that will help--building things, for no other reason than that I can (doesn't it feel amazing to build something--and even more amazing to build something where it doesn't matter if it lasts, or if it's destroyed? For it was fun to build, and that is enough).  Playing, doing something that requires concentration for no other reason than that it's fun...playing with the seriousness of a child. Creating something unimportant in the long run, all important now.
    Building with legos.