Play On: Finding Magic In The Mundane

Staff Writer Maryam Ahmed reminds readers that even in the depths of stress and mundane winter months, there’s still time to find joy in small moments of happiness.

I used to love January. It was a clean slate in two senses; it kicked off the year and held the promise of birthday parties. I grew up somewhere hot and dry, so seasonal depression was never a thing, and before all else, I loved the shape of the word: January. I loved the way my mouth curved around the ‘a’ like a smile, and that it reminded me of sweet things because of its phonetic proximity to the word ‘jam’. I was compelled to romanticise a random month– a rather uneventful one, religiously, for reasons that were almost entirely trivial. I held strong against Blue Monday accusations, braved the Worst Month of the Year allegations. January was a hill I was born on and would die on.

As all childhood memories do, though, the arbitrary sense of wonder I felt towards the start of the year lost its glitter over time, brushed away and scattered from being donned so often over the years. There was always something: an exam, a pandemic, a university offer, the fear of aging, the threat of failed resolutions. Always some way or other of over intellectualising time, complicating the things I once loved for reasons that were equally as irrational as the original fascination. This time last year, I was sitting in the exact cafe I’m writing this from– Blank Street, Praed Street– asking myself whether it was time to pack up my life in London and go home. I felt far away from the things that brought me joy– the theatre, the literature, the poetry. I had moved to one of the world’s cultural capitals, only to feel taunted by its presence all around me, everywhere, always out of reach.

Recently, I got free tickets to see the National Youth Theatre REP company’s production of Twelfth Night with a close friend. We found out the morning-of that we’d won the tickets, and had to haul ourselves 40 minutes north to see it in the middle of deadline season. We were jaded, to say the least. But sitting in that little theatre, lost in thought about all the essays I was about to have the chance to mess up, I noticed the strangeness of the set: Christmas trees, each alone, formidable enough to be the centrepiece of someone’s living room, hanging upturned from the industrial ceiling with stars dripping from their ends.

A warm spark ran through me at the sight: the rush of settling into an old, loved habit— chasing theatre and venerating Januaries— a spark of play. This was to become a running theme throughout the night, as the ensemble proclaimed to us in the opening, telling us to look out for the epicentre of the play’s opening line: “If music be the food of love, play on.” An ever-drunk, boisterous Sir Toby and his off-beat entourage, an artfully melodramatic Olivia, an endearingly petty Malvolio in all her bright-yellow glory.

The entire evening was an attempt to remind us, the audience, that in the dark trudge of the winter, there is still time and reason to take things easy, to laugh and revel regardless of how silly you might appear. To play: what we know as children, dodging multiplication sheets and waiting desperately by classroom clocks, or affirming yes Mum yes I’ve finished my work yes I’ve studied yes yes yes, only to burst out the garden door: play, the sense that we lose as we grow, and never stop to think we may have reason to grieve.

I’m someone who freaks myself out a lot. My first try at things, my first meetings with people I don’t know, my fifth meetings with people I like, my ‘last chances’… I don’t know how to not assign significance to things, or how to not look for meaning in them. This makes me very good at coming up with analogies, or finding singular happiness in seemingly mundane occurrences. But it also inadvertently leads to a less-than-healthy relationship with my academic work, pining for hours over wording, refreshing Turnitin profusely on deadline days and post days and in between days, obsessing over grades. Hating Januaries, for their limbo nature, somewhere between performance and response, at university as in life at large.

But I’ve been trying to take my time to turn and turn my back on the rat race mentality. Lots of us are waiting on assignments or exam grades from December and January. Many are picking up new skills or applying for internships and getting started on New Year’s resolutions. It can be easy to slip from a healthy, motivating perception of these objectives into a vicious cycle of anxiety and compensation.

Yet, in light of the winter trudge, I would like to submit a tentative alternative. Alongside your grand projects and fears for the future, I invite you to make pockets of time to suspend your disbelief and play. Find things that bring you the kind of joy that trumps your instinct to cringe at yourself. For me, that’s writing this little piece, knowing that it will not be as polished and professional as I hope to someday be, and that not every thematic string will tie itself in a perfect bow. The makeshift dance classes at Piccadilly Circus. Bright yellow boots. Conversations with strangers at Foyle’s, or jokes on a crammed Bush House elevator. I’m still worried and working, but I’ve been trying to embody the upside-down Christmas tree, a month or two late but happily covered in tinsel, taking a moment before I hold my nose again and dive into the semester. For now, I am waiting for January to take its toll gently, allowing February to ease in, and looking for magic, even in the mundane.