Elmo and the Need for Play
Earlier this week, Elmo (@elmo) posted on X, formerly Twitter, the following: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” The response was wholly unpredicted. Read the response here.
As you can read in the post, individuals quickly went to tell Elmo just how not-good they were actually doing! Not only did this surprise me, but it also didn’t surprise me in a way. I think because everyone’s responses showed just how deeply they were feeling, especially ever since coming out of the pandemic. The response strikes a cord with just how important those childhood sense of belonging, having things together, and being free to imagine are.
Jaak Panksepp was a researcher who did a phenomenal job illustrating how 7 different emotions can be so important that they actually emphasize 7 engrained brain networks - that every individual has! One of those networks is Play. Now, I capitalize that because he does but, I think it’s also good just for emphasizing that everyone should pay attention to Play. Coming at this from a more primal approach, one of the purposes that Panksepp outlines for play is this: that fundamentally, when we play we are putting ourselves out there for the other person to interact with. Play is a moment to decide what it looks like to dominate an interaction or decide to let the other person win (to “gracefully disengage, submit, or accept defeat" (2012, p. 355). We present ourselves to another person, we interact to see first who will come out on top; but then, it starts to transform into this space where you know where you stand with the other person. The friendship blossoms. The friend learns that there’s healthy give-and-take. But beautifully, you start to create a space where you are known - and children are doing this. Panksepp calls it the “stratified social fabric” (p. 355). It’s the idea that Play is ultimately meant to help us learn how find our place with others.
Back to Elmo, I imagine that when people saw the tweet they went back to a place where they knew where they stood in the world. They were drawn back to that place of childhood belonging. And as it may have been completely counter to what’s expected on social media, everyone embraced that space as this collective space where you belong. That was the magic of Elmo. That was the magic of Play.
It makes sense that the post had that response because when people saw that it was Elmo asking, they knew it was a safe space. Beautifully, everyone was transported emotionally to this collective place where they were known. And that is the reason Play is so important. Without it, we lose the sense that someone else out there might not be against us, might give us a shot, and might not tell us all the things we don’t want to believe about ourselves.
Panksepp, J., & Biven, L. (2012). The archaeology of mind: Neuroevolutionary origins of human emotions. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
