The Future Tense

A Playful Detour into the Unknown

Photo by Art Institute of Chicago on Unsplash

Let’s try something different today.

Let’s pause the noise—the politics, the stress, the pressure to produce, perform, or polish.

(If those are the things on your mind, you can wander back to When Things Fray, Finding Clarity, or When the Unforeseen Seeps In. They’re there if you need them.)

But this? This is something else.

Why today? Because I’ve noticed something—among clients, friends, and, let’s be honest, in myself. When we’re overwhelmed by uncertainty or standing on the precipice of change, we often go looking for answers in the most serious places: strategies, structures, spreadsheets. But the real shifts? The ones that reshape us from the inside out? They tend to start somewhere much more unexpected. Somewhere playful perhaps.

And besides—what better time to talk about playful shifts than now? As Spring begins to wriggle her way back into our lives. Unfurling her beauty. Shaking off the hush of winter. Reminding us in every breeze, bloom and twitter that we can hit reset too.

Photo by Cris DiNoto on Unsplash

Through this article, I want to invite you into that space where we loosen the grip of old stories and begin to imagine futures that feel a little lighter, a little more “wild,” or at the very least, less fearful.

Today we will talk about Play.

Serious play.

Future-tinged, uncensored, full-bodied play.

To help you feel what I mean, here’s a little exercise. You can do it from the comfort of your couch, your desk, your café chair—wherever you happen to be reading this.

Start by saying these words out loud. And really pronounce them.

Feel the splatter of spit on your lips, the flick of your tongue against your teeth.

Ready?

Sizzle
Plop
Ribbit
Wobble
Kerplunk
Brouhaha

Now, play with volume. If you’ve got space—and a little boldness—stand on a chair, make a megaphone with your hands, and call these words out into the world. Or, crouch down, make yourself as small as possible and whisper them as if telling a tiny bug your greatest secret. Roll your ‘R’s, try a silly accent, gesture wildly to no one in particular.

Are you feeling it?

Did your breath deepen when you shouted?

Did you feel a tickle in your nose when you whispered?

Did your pulse quicken with the sudden movement in your body?

Now pause. And ask yourself:

Which voice felt most natural to you? Loud and boisterous? Or soft and welcoming?

Which word felt foreign, or silly, or unexpectedly strong?

What shifted—in your breath, your posture, your mood?

These are the questions I might ask if you were sitting across from me. And whichever word, or tone, or posture called to you the most—well, that would be our door. And we would walk through it together.

This kind of wordplay is one way we begin to unstick our stories—to wiggle free from the predictable, and play our way into possibility.

Photo by Shannon VanDenHeuvel on Unsplash

In Narrative Coaching, there’s a process David Drake calls Serious Play—and it’s quite possibly my favorite part. It happens after someone has chosen to shift their story—when the old script no longer works, but the new one hasn’t fully arrived.

It’s liminal. Improvisational. Tender. And wildly generative.

“Play helps people of all ages learn how to interact with their environment, activate more of their whole mind, experiment with new ways of seeing themselves and being seen by others, create their own knowledge of the world and shape their space in it.”

David B. Drake, Narrative Coaching

It’s a return to what children instinctively know: that the world can be remade through imagination. That identities can be tried on and tossed aside.

In coaching, Serious Play might look like:

• Practicing a difficult conversation in a safe space

• Embodying a posture of possibility (literally—standing taller, or turning a shoulder to the past)

• Drawing a map of an imaginary tomorrow

• Stepping into a “what if” world

It’s not acting. It’s not performance. It’s not the kind of role play you may remember from corporate trainings. And I get it—if roleplaying brings up some cringey memories for you, you’re not alone. Back when I worked in the corporate world, I was often invited into roleplaying exercises that felt forced and demeaning. Many of my clients arrive with that same resistance—worried that play might make them feel small, exposed, or judged.

But in coaching, play can be different.

It’s not a test. Not a trick. Not a trap.
It’s an invitation—into your own future story.

In this space, play emerges gently and only after trust has been built.

There’s room for observation without evaluation. You’re not being graded. The coach is simply there to hold space, to help open new doors. Because if we never try on new versions of ourselves, how can we possibly know which ones might fit?

So today, let this be your prompt:
What’s one thing you’re holding a little too tightly right now?
And what might shift if you loosened your grip—just for a moment?

Maybe it’s a decision, a habit, a way you always do things.
Maybe it’s the belief that you always have to be the one who has it together.
Or the assumption that your future has to look anything like your past.

What if—for today—you gave yourself permission to wobble?
To ribbit, to sizzle, to plop?
To be loud, or gentle, or gloriously weird?

Spring is doing it all around us.
What might bloom if you did too?

If you would like to learn more about Narrative Coaching, you can visit my coaching website here.

And a few extras:

Writing this essay brought me back to a wonderful children’s book titled The Book With No Pictures—a wild experiment in serious play for children (and parents!). It’s one of my children’s’ favorites, and admittedly mine too, as a joyful reminder of the power of imagination and surprise.

And if you’d like a deeper dive into the philosophy and science of play, I can’t recommend this Marginalian essay by Maria Popova enough. It’s a beautiful meditation on why play matters—especially when we forget how.