Serio Ludere Philosophy
“I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.”
— Helena Bonham-Carter
That's the short version, simply put.
For the curious, the long version, a compact philosophical treatise:
Serio & Ludere, two Latin words that come together to produce a particular meaning. To play seriously, or serious play, is the kernel from which all the colors of our spectrum emerge. All the genes in our DNA.
SL is inspired by and inspires a way of living, a posture of total presence and total abandon. In the books of Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan calls it "controlled folly."
Life is a Grand Mystery. It is brief, like the blink of an eye. We will surely die, and we will take nothing with us. Remembering this simple truth, the futility of it all, frees us. At the end of the day, nothing is all too important, nothing is fatal (read here one of the most beautiful things every written), we needn't worry so much. We need not fear mistakes; we can handle them. So we don't play small; we play in the image of the mystery's grandness.
Playfulness is essentially an openness to anything that may happen,¹ and it is from this openness that play draws its power: the courage to be exposed and vulnerable, and not mere readiness but an appetite for facing the unknown, an appetite for life and living. From here we may play, and a beautiful game it will be. A worthy one.
Love the hand that fate deals you and play it as your own.²
During my training in mathematics, I encountered and collected two very beautiful notions.
The first is chaos. There is enough entropy in life to allow for anything to happen. Small changes can echo into drastic consequences. Watch how smoke swirls and you will know that anything can come to you. We ought to continue to challenge the imaginary limit of known possibilities and unfold our own myth. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.³
The second is that of The Book. A story mathematicians love to tell: somewhere there is The Book, an imaginary volume containing the most perfect proof of every theorem. When a proof is especially beautiful, mathematicians say it comes straight "from The Book." What earns a proof its place there? It is elegant. It strikes. It makes a truth feel not merely correct but inevitable. I believe something like The Book exists for life, too. For most situations there exists a perfect move: the right words, the most striking argument, the wittiest joke, the perfect gift, the most elegant solution. We rarely find it, but when we do, we know it instantly. Those moments are pages from The Book.
Putting things together, anything is possible, and from a state of serious play, of controlled folly, we are positioned to channel the moves of the gods: artfully playing the hands we are dealt, acting receptively, weaving a life that surprises us. A grand life is a dance of small acts.
Act great, my dear. Always act great.⁴
إن الله جميل يحب الجمال⁵
God is beautiful and He loves beauty. He loves the loftiest of affairs and disapproves of pettiness.⁵
To strive for beauty, then, is to draw closer to the divine. It is devotion, and not luxury. With every act of beauty, each time we choose generosity over smallness, the grand over the small-minded, we move toward God. Each time we give in to pettiness, we drift away.
This devotion is not kept for grand occasions. It lives in the everyday, and it begins with attention.
We listen, we read between the lines: the faint smile, the subtle gaze. We are inventive with what challenges us, creative with the cards we are dealt. We wink, we gift, we surprise. We love gestures. We curate, decorate and embellish the spaces we inhabit. We create meaning from the unraveling of our own lives, breathe life into objects and guard tokens of our journeys. We embrace sophistication and celebrate passion. We honor, appreciate and encourage what is very well done.
How is living made an art? Through details, through the smallest gestures. The little notes left for a loved one on the edges of a book, the concoction of essential oils we experiment with at home, the smell of the laundry detergent we use. Life becomes an art through being present, paying attention, being deliberate. Through the disposition to embellish every corner we can.
Alas, most of us will not resolve the mystery of life and being alive, but while we're here, we are to honor this marvelous experience. We play, and we play seriously. Serio Ludere.
Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.⁶
Yet, take note, underneath there is only one great art, that of making a complete human being of oneself.⁷ I believe this is what Voltaire meant when he wrote, Il faut cultiver notre jardin.⁸
Work is love made visible.⁹ SL is my love letter to myself and to you. I hope for it to contribute to the beauty in your life, to inspire you and give you joy.
Serio Ludere,
Gida
¹ James P. Carse, Finite and Infinite Games
² Marcus Aurelius (attributed)
³ Anaïs Nin
⁴ Hafiz
⁵ Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad
⁶ Henry Miller
⁷ Gurdjieff
⁸ Voltaire, Candide
⁹ Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
