By Dr David Loe
Last week, I went camping. Nothing overly planned – just a few mates, two tents that should’ve been retired years ago, and that classic male confidence of “she’ll be right”.
Day one was exactly what you’d expect: lots of oversights and a little bit of tension.
“Where’s the instructions to build the tent?”
“How do you open a can without a can-opener?”
But then, something shifted.
Take away the phones, slow everything down, sit a bunch of men around a fire, and the whole performance starts to fall away. You stop being “the stressed one” or “the controller”. You’re just a grown man trying to toast a marshmallow and keep warm. At a certain point, we started doing things that made absolutely no sense. Whittling sticks down to create the best marshmallow holder. No prize. No rules. Just fun and a bit of pride on the line. Most of all: laughter!
That’s when it hit me: we’d drifted back into play.
Not the kind of play you schedule, track, or even force; just simple, pointless, slightly ridiculous fun. The needle isn’t being moved; your life isn’t being changed; but somehow, through this ‘slightly ridiculous fun’, you’re reminded of how joyful life can be.
During Men’s Health Week, we talk about stress, and burnout, and responsibility. We talk about being reliable and getting on top of things. But we rarely talk about play.
Yes, life got busy and serious. We became dependable and somewhere along the line, the part of us that used to kick a ball for no reason got pushed aside. Not because it stopped mattering, but because it stopped feeling ‘useful’.
But play is useful. In fact, it’s vital. It’s not childish. For me, play is a reset button. It’s a way of reconnecting with the part of myself that doesn’t care about being impressive or efficient. And underneath all that, it’s a way to check in on each other without making it awkward. Because here’s the truth: we don’t always talk directly. Sometimes, through laughter and shared silliness, we talk around things. Sitting by a campfire toasting marshmallows gives us the opportunity to do that, side‑by‑side instead of face‑to‑face.
I saw this in action last week. No one sat down for a big emotional chat. But it happened anyway, in small snatches. Someone would laugh about the ‘sticky stick’, and then suddenly we would be talking about something real – without even noticing the shift.
That’s the thing about play. It doesn’t push. It just opens the door. It allows the candle to burn at one end.
By the end of the trip, things felt light – which leads to my parting message for Men’s Health Week. To be well, sometimes you just need to welcome back what you’ve allowed to slip away. Remember to let a bit of looseness, silliness, and life back in. And know that connection doesn’t have to look like a deep conversation, either. Sometimes, it looks like a grown man trying to cook a dozen marshmallows on a single stick.
