“Organizers of public play events of magnitude tend to forget that what they are doing is so radical, so fraught with political significance. Should they remember, they just might be able to appreciate how far their events reach beyond the fun they create. It’s fun, all right. New games. Old games. But it’s more than all that. It’s a social movement.” – Bernard DeKoven
“We understand victory as something that can be achieved only by one side, by an individual or a team or one competing party (tribe, nation, political body). The idea that victory can be shared, that we can all win, all succeed together remains revolutionary.” – Bernard DeKoven
“I think kids know what we’re talking about here. I think they experience shared transcendence a lot more often than we adults do – or let on to. We adults make it too hard on ourselves. We think have to win. And we forget that it’s not about winning at all after all – it’s really actually about playing well together. We forget that we are, in fact, the ones making the rules here. We forget that together, just us players, we make it even more fun.” – Bernard DeKoven
“These moments of coliberation, of shared transcendence, like a moment in a well-played game or well-acted play, like moments of harmony, love, resonance with each other – these are the moments we use to measure a well-lived life. And, for those of us who willing to play, these moments are ours.
“Coliberation – A shared transcendence of personal limitations, of our understanding of our own capabilities; a sudden, momentary transformation of our awareness of the connections between ourselves, each other, and the world we find each other in.
A shared transcendence: Something we experience in certain moments of making love, of playing with children and animals, standing in a storm together, floating in the ocean together, listening to and making music together, watching a movie together; walking in the woods or on a mountain, eating a meal, reading a book, playing a game together….
of personal limitations, of our understanding of our own capabilities: An unsustainable union where distinctions between self and community, mind and body – between whatever separates us from each other, the environment in which we discover each other – are set aside.
...a sudden, momentary transformation of our awareness of the connections between ourselves, each other, and the world we find each other in: Sudden, momentary and unsustainable because we must ultimately return to ourselves, to “minding the store.”
Sudden, momentary, unsustainable, spontaneous, undefining, transforming.
We return changed, not the same person we were – our understanding of who and what we can become, our very selves, our relationships – redefined. “
Read more about CoLiberation from Bernard DeKoven