Burke, NRPA, and the Importance of a Big Purple Party

Fun is only done right for the sake of fun with no peripheral agendas, hints of business, or underlying purposes.  Otherwise, it’s “fake fun”.  When fun isn’t real, we don’t get the full benefits.

“We need more moments where we’re simultaneously in the zone and feeling ourselves, but not for work.” – Catherine Price; Author of The Power of Fun

Real fun; unadulterated fun, brings us happiness and joy.  We’re enjoying ourselves in the moment, being fully present, without our brains being attached or distracted otherwise.  Experiencing happiness and joy on a regular basis is more powerful than genes, nutrition, and exercise for overall health and longevity. 

Add friends or a group of friendly, fun people and the effects are multiplied.  I used the word “unadulterated” because as adults, we tend to do fun things from time to time, but not fully.  We convolute it with thoughts of things we have to get done, “important” stuff (whatever that is), and other obligations.  Children get fun right.  It’s very important that we do as well.   

After 15 years in the parks, recreation, and playground industry, I had the pleasure of attending my first Big Purple Party by Burke.  Business and marketing sure, but when it was purple party time, that’s what it was.  It was just fun for the sake of fun.  It was observable and apparent in the 1,800 people in attendance. 

Great band, great music, and dancing.  I caught myself a couple of times thinking the music is just a little too loud to have a conversation with someone.  Crazy, right?  It’s like playing pool volleyball, wondering if the water could be less wet. 

This is the playground industry.  We promote play and fun.  Everyone at the party was a professional working in the parks and recreation industry.  It sounds like working in a field with the words “parks”, “recreation”, and “playgrounds” would be all fun and games.  While it’s fulfilling and can be fun, it’s a lot of work, stress, moving parts, red tape, politics, management, organization, delegation, responsibilities, and a hundred other things. 

It was so good to see all these professionals letting go and just having a good time.  We can get caught up in day to day responsibilities and making fun available for others, while we lose track of our own fun.    We all need to recharge, reinvigorate, and decompress.  This is what I saw at Burke’s Big Purple Party.

Looking forward to seeing everyone at next year’s party.

Play hard!

The Real Reason that Prince and Burke Live Purple

Microsoft’s default or core color is blue.  The official Apple colors are black and grey.  And Google covers basically everything, everywhere, all at once with the primary colors of paint and light. 

But really, what’s in a color? 

Microsoft’s blue represents security, trust, and loyalty.  Apple’s black is about sophistication, power, and mystery.  Hmm … mystery.  And Google?  It’s plausible that the real reason is Google’s first server was built with Lego, in blue, red, yellow, and green. 

So, what’s with Burke’s purple? 

The tagline of Burke’s playground and recreation products is “Play that moves you.”  But, not just in a physical way.  So much goes into research, design, and development in each play element and product and how it fits into an overall system to ignite cognitive, social, emotional, and imaginative skill development.  It’s more than just a “playground”, but we’re not supposed to know that.  We should see it as an awesome thing to climb on, slide on, swing, jump, and laugh on, while leaving the technical stuff to the experts.

Purple is a color that encourages the mind, body, and soul to live in harmony.  It brings together balance of mental clarity with emotional stability.  It’s the color of enlightenment, welcoming all schools of thought.  It’s unbiased and civilized, as it promotes understanding and acceptance.

Yep, colors have meaning.  I didn’t know how much, until I went down this rabbit hole.

Did you know that purple is the most powerful visible wavelength of all the colors of the rainbow?  It stimulates our mood while it calms the mind and nerves.  It’s uplifting, as it encourages imagination, creativity, playfulness, and uniqueness.  This is why many musicians, writers, poets, and artists respond well to purple. 

But, that’s not why Prince embraced the color.  Purple represents royalty and according his sister Sharon Nelson, it made him feel more “Princely”. 

Royalty, strength, prestige, ability, and innovation are all represented by purple, while on a more human scale, empathy, peace, happiness, compassion, spirituality, and inspiration.

What’s in a color?  Well … more than meets the eye, apparently.

Wait, I hear Prince playing in the background; “I only want to see you laughing in the purple rain …”