The Courage To Connect

Daniel Caron, MS, CAGS and O. Fred Donaldson, Ph.D.

In the spring of 2003 Daniel Caron met Monty Roberts at Equine Affair in Columbus, Ohio.  Monty's message of kindness and connection resonated with Daniel, who along with his colleague Dr. Fred Donaldson, shares Original Play with children, adults and animals around the world.  At Monty's suggestion, Daniel contacted Koelle Simpson at the Monty Roberts International Learning Center and an exchange of information began.  In July 2004 Fred and Daniel traveled to Flag Is Up Farm to share an Original Play workshop with the staff at the Learning Center.  The response was positive and they have returned to the Flag Is Up Farm to facilitate Original Play workshops with students and the general public.

The best definitions of Original Play we know are still those given to us by children.  Many years ago a five-year-old boy named David said to Fred, "play is when we don't know that we are different from each other."   More recently, Anna, a ten year old, added, "Play is being able to tell the world that you don't like what it is doing to you, and not harming anyone while you do it."  A six-year-old boy at a Family Violence Prevention Shelter recently told Daniel play is "practicing turning the other cheek."

What is perhaps not so evident in the words of these children is their courage to connect with others.  Play is an invitation to respond to the world in kindness regardless of what comes at you.  Play allows us to effectively respond to aggression and violence while maintaining self-esteem and not diminishing the esteem of others.  We learn these skills not from other adults but from our best teachers, children and animals.  As so often happens the animals and children teach us something we think we already know, only to discover that we know so little.

Going out to play is a flesh and blood experience. It is also a summons to belong to something larger than any one of us and to bridge the deepest divide in the human spirit. In play we are invited to express the courage to live sacred moments in secular days when we discover and feel our place in life's scheme of things.

Fred recalls an experience that he shared with an African lioness at a big cat reserve.

I met Nala on my first day at a reserve for big cats.  I spent my first day introducing myself to Siberian lynx, a mountain lion, a Siberian Tiger, a Bengal Tiger, an African lion and lioness.  Nala, the lioness, was the only one who did not come up to greet me.  She stayed far back and looked at, or rather into, me.  Even in a quick glance I had never experienced anything like her gaze.  Her body was serene but her gaze was fierce.  At the end of the day my hosts said that when I returned in the morning they would decide which of the big cats that I would play with.  Since they knew the cats that seemed fine with me. As I went to sleep that night I wondered if I would be invited to face the lioness.  It was as if I could feel her within me.

As soon as I arrived my hosts told me that they thought I should play with Nala. I walked into her enclosure and knelt down on the ground.  She was lying about twenty feet away from me off to my right side.  She immediately got up and walked directly toward me.  There was a fierceness about her that wasn't aggressive but, just clear and determined.  When she was about six feet away from me she disappeared from my sight.  I found out later from my hosts that the reason I lost sight of her was because she leaped into the air and I didn't see it.

Nala landed softly on my back.  She wrapped her forelegs around my upper body.  Her body was snugly against my back but I didn't feel trapped.  The lioness swaddled me.  One of her paws was in front of my face.  It was so big that I couldn't see around it.  I reached up with my hand and jostled her paw.  I recall thinking, "Wow, I'm playing with her." Then immediately another thought followed as if shot like an arrow though my brain, "Fred, pay attention, this is the razor edge of life and death."

When she landed on my back Nala had opened her jaw and closed it around my head.  For a month I could feel the imprint of her large canine teeth in my forehead and at the base of my skull.  She held me firmly but not hurtfully.  I felt no pain, nor did she scratch me with teeth or extend her claws.

My hosts were frightened by Nala's pounce and after some time came into the enclosure with a fire extinguisher.  At the hissing sound of the extinguisher Nala jumped off of me and stood by my side.  We walked slowly to the gate.  I leaned down and she licked me. Nala's fierce eyes and gentle touch live within me now.

Daniel recalls a recent connection that surprised him in a grocery store.
I was standing in a grocery store line with my food basket waiting to reach the check out clerk.  Bam!  I was hit from behind and nearly pushed off my feet.  Momentarily annoyed, I turned around to discover the small, elderly woman who crashed into me with her shopping cart.  She apologized and said that at her age her eyesight was failing.  I nodded, smiled and turned back toward the checkout clerk.  A moment later, Bam!  The shopping cart again struck me, this time harder.  I turned around and said to the elderly woman, "You’re just hitting me because you want a hug, right?"  The elderly woman paused, just looking at me. Her eyes filled with tears. She responded, "You are the first person to offer me a hug me since my husband died and we were married for fifty years."  I put my basket down and embraced her as she cried.  She told me her name and wished me a wonderful day.  We then parted.  In truth, we did not need any parting words.  Nothing more needed to be said.

Here are two accounts expressing the courage to play with the world.  This courage is often invisible because it is expressed in life's little touches.  It is these frequently unseen and unfelt experiences that connect us to each other.  It may seem courageous to play with a lioness, but it is the courage of countless children that enable Fred to play with Nala.  Daniel's grocery store courage may seem much less visible, but it is all the more real for its everydayness.  Not many people play with lions, but we all encounter little bumps in our lives.  But do we have the courage to hug rather than hit back?

The world may not always be kind, but it can be received with kindness.  In coming out to play we are constantly new and vulnerable to possibility, open to receive Creation in all things. Not only do we have a capacity for compassion, we recognize that there is a larger compassionate principle operating in Creation as a whole.  We base these observations on experience playing with over 250,000 humans and animals including whales, bears, wolves, hummingbirds and many other creatures. In the daily practice of kindness and safety that we call "Original Play" we go to the heart of all Creation and discover the true meaning of connection. What we are suggesting is that Original Play is a basic orientation, a way of being, acting and relating to others and to the world in a manner characterized by kindness—a realization that all life is of only one kind.

From the hand of a child, the mouth of a lioness or the embrace of elderly person, play's touch is a gesture of courage to express our deeply interested kinship. In play we enter the little circle of each other's arms and the larger circle of heart we call Creation. We enter the smaller circle by our willingness to be human, and the larger by choosing to be kind.  Through this touch we come to know ourselves not as people, nor even as a human but as a face of God.