The Fifth Step - Playing

Turning practice into play

If you are following along, you likely know more about yourself than when you began. You've also likely built a clearer sense of the relational web you exist within, and started adjusting that web according to your own priorities and desires. This final step, then, isn't so much about a new process — it's about embedding everything before it within an attitude.

To be honest, if you follow the process, this attitude is likely to develop quite naturally. Applying The Crossing as given means proceeding slowly — noticing, gradually building your understanding of the rules your life follows, and starting with low-stakes change. Things like having lunch somewhere different, trying a new hobby, or starting a gentle exercise program aren't likely to turn your world upside down. But they're not energetically neutral, either. It takes energy to try new things. If this is going to be a way of life, it has to be sustainable — it has to give something back.

The simplest way to "balance the ledger" is for whatever you do to create a sense of joy, relaxation, or fun — some state that feels genuinely good to you. In other words, to make your growth and development a kind of play. There's good evidence that play is one of the best ways we're exposed to new possibilities, new rules, and different perspectives. Kept in low-stakes environments, play lets you learn who you are in different circumstances, while giving back at least as much energy as the growth costs to make.

Having said all that, there are pitfalls. It's possible to be mistaken about what will actually make your life better. And none of us can see the whole web we exist within — the law of unseen consequences can occasionally bite.

What Moves When You Move

When we watch a child play, we often sympathize with both the delight and the frustration they experience as they learn the laws of cause and effect — the shock of a tower built too tall collapsing, the small fury of not being able to force a square peg into a round hole, no matter how hard they try.

Yet we can find ourselves strangely thrown when we bump up against the very same laws. When a long-time friend drifts in response to a change in how you manage your life, or when work starts to feel dull because you've outgrown its demands, it's easy to feel cheated. When we do the work, part of us expects the world to hold still while we adjust.

But that isn't how it works. Others are free to adapt in response to the changes we make. Different parts of us can flex in response to change, too. Start exercising more, and you might find you need to eat differently. Develop new interests, and long-standing friendships may no longer share the foundations they once stood on. So when you embark on a process of change — even in low-stakes environments — it's worth being ready for the fact that it might actually work.

The Edges of the Map

The good news is that play has been shown to build the very abilities needed to manage even unforeseen change well. Exposure to new rules and perspectives, in low-stakes environments, makes us more able to pivot in the face of the unexpected. It makes us less dependent on things staying the same in order to be happy. And it teaches us something important: that we're more capable of adapting than we tend to realise.

Having said that, it's worth being honest that while we can change some things, we can't change everything. The overused maxim "you can be anything if you try hard enough" simply isn't true. Not everyone can become a high-fashion model, or lead a country, no matter the effort involved. You can change the relational network you're part of — but there are basic facts of your make-up that are genuinely fixed, and no amount of effort will move them.

Starting with low-stakes environments lets you discover these edges in relative safety. If you're someone who doesn't adapt well to high altitude, you don't want to find that out on an expedition up Mount Everest. Similarly, if the people around you tend to rely on the familiar, turning up to Bingo night with a fresh Mohawk might not be the gentle experiment you were hoping for. These examples are deliberately extreme, to make the point land — but the underlying point holds: slow and steady is what makes this safe to learn.

Reading Failure Differently

We all value success. It feels good to get something right, to reach a goal, to win a prize. But that doesn't mean failure is bad. It means you've found an edge — discovered something about yourself that isn't as amenable to change as you'd hoped, or something about the world around you that doesn't bend the way you wanted it to. These are the moments that teach you your own boundaries. They tell you something real about the overall shape of the life you're building, and what's actually possible within it.

Knowing what's possible is what lets you focus your efforts well. Without that sense of boundary, your efforts are like seeds in the wind — they can end up anywhere, including places you never meant them to grow.

From Here …

You started this process by learning to notice — to see what was actually there, without rushing to explain it. Five steps later, you're standing somewhere different: with a map of your own making, a few tested paths, and an attitude that can meet whatever comes next without needing it to go a certain way.

From here, there's no fixed order left to follow. Some days you'll find yourself simply noticing again. Other days you'll be back to mapping, or trying something new, or resting in the parts of the terrain you've already come to know well. That's not starting over — that's what it looks like to actually live inside a process, rather than complete it once and move on.

The Crossing was never really about arriving somewhere. It was about learning to walk your own ground with open eyes. You have what you need for that now. The rest is yours.

Return Home