“Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
In 1998 neuroscientist, Jaak Pansepp, studied rat pups playing in their cages for four days. They were at play almost constantly. On the fifth day, he put a tuft of cat hair into the cage. Even though these lab rats had never been near a cat the playing stopped. When the cat hair was removed a day later it took three days for the rats to play again, but the level of play was never as active as before the cat hair was put into the cage. He attempted to replicate the experiment using dog hair, but the rats displayed no signs of fear.
Pansepp concluded that playfulness is inhibited by negative emotions and that once the fear system is triggered it’s hard to turn off.
After learning about this experiment I like to ask myself what’s the cat hair in my life? What imaginary fears trigger old ways of thinking that limits my level of happiness?
It’s time to clean out my cage once and for all and get back to the level of play I had as a child – when playing was what life was all about.
