I Stopped Because They Watched

There was a thing you loved and you were not doing it for any reason.

That is the part that has gone and it is the part worth naming. You did it because your body wanted to. Swimming. Riding somewhere. Dancing in a front room. Climbing a particular tree. Whatever it was, you did it with no purpose attached and no outcome in mind, which is a state of affairs most adults cannot even remember being in.

And then one year somebody watched you do it and said something, or did not even say anything, and you became aware of being seen, and it stopped.

Not immediately. It faded. But it faded because a thing done for its own sake cannot survive being watched by somebody who is evaluating, and once you knew you could be evaluated the whole activity changed category.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. You have gone at the size question for years and you have gotten up every time, and you did not lose the thing you loved through indifference. You lost it because somebody looked.

So this page is not going to tell you to take it up again. That is a plan and there is no plan on this site.

I want to show you a verse about a city full of people playing.

What being watched did to it

Consider the mechanism, because it explains why trying harder has nothing to do with this.

Play requires unselfconsciousness. That is not a nice feature of play, it is the whole condition of it. The moment a person becomes aware of being observed and assessed, the activity acquires a performance dimension, and performance and play cannot occupy the same body at the same time.

So what you lost was not interest. You lost the conditions.

You were losing the conditions rather than the interest, and no amount of willingness has ever once been able to restore an unselfconsciousness. Zechariah 8:5 says the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a verse about play arrive on a woman who lost hers at eleven.

And notice how completely it went. Not just that activity. A whole category went with it: things done in a body for no reason. And nothing has ever moved into that space, because everything offered since has had a purpose attached to it, and purpose is the opposite of what is missing.

You have an empty category rather than a missing activity, and no purposeful thing has ever once been able to fill it. The written word puts play in a street in a promise about a restored city, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an empty category noticeable rather than merely absent.

The streets shall be full

Zechariah is describing what a restored city looks like, and the detail he chooses is remarkable.

And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. (Zechariah 8:5, King James Version)

He could have chosen anything. Trade, worship, safety, plenty. He chooses children playing in public, which is the single most unselfconscious activity there is, and he offers it as the sign that a place has been made right.

Play in the open is the evidence. Not the reward.

You are looking at play named as evidence rather than as a reward, and no restored place in Scripture has ever once been described without it. Zechariah 8 makes unselfconscious activity the mark of a city put right, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a permission rather than an image.

And read where the playing happens. In the streets. In public, in the open, in front of everybody, which is exactly the condition under which yours stopped.

You have a promise with the watching already in it, and no public street has ever once been a reason for a child in that verse to stop. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the observation and the play in the same sentence without a conflict, and the written word says playing in the streets thereof.

Do it badly where nobody can see

Now the part I came to say, and the two halves both matter.

Do the thing you loved. Once. Today or this week.

And do it where nobody can see, and do it badly. Both of those are the instruction, not concessions to it. Not badly as a joke about yourself. Badly as in not attempting to be any good at it, which is the condition you did it in when you were nine.

You are allowed to be bad at it, and no play has ever once required a standard. The written word describes children playing in a street with no mention of quality anywhere in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes doing something badly on purpose feel like freedom rather than failure.

And here is why unseen first, even though the verse says streets. The verse is a destination. You are starting from a place where being watched ended it, and the first instance has to happen in conditions where the thing that killed it cannot reach it. The street comes later, if it ever comes, and it does not have to.

You have a first instance available in private, and no restoration has ever once had to begin in public. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a thing start somewhere small and unobserved, and Zechariah 8:5 is the written word underneath it, where the city is full of children playing and nobody in the verse is being marked.