Am I too old to play, or did I just forget how?

One windy day I was forty and chasing my hat down the market street, laughing like a boy. A neighbor caught up, out of breath, and asked if I wasn't ashamed. Ashamed in front of whom, I asked him. The hat didn't care. The wind didn't care. He was the only one keeping score. That's the trick of it. Nobody sits you down one birthday and tells you to stop playing. You just start imagining an audience, and the audience in your head is stricter than any real person you know. The belief sets quietly: I am someone who doesn't do that anymore. Nobody voted on it. You simply stopped checking if it was true. If you're working through this with a partner or a small group, you have an advantage. You can catch each other imagining that audience. One person watching another play badly and freely, without a single judging word, is worth more than any argument about whether adults are allowed to have fun.