Finding Meaning in Life Through Play: An Invitation to Rabat and Casablanca

Soulplay session in Rabat with adults gathered around cards

Many people today struggle with the question of meaning. Work, routines, and even entertainment often feel empty. The philosopher and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke suggests that meaning is not something you can possess like an object. It is something you enact through ways of knowing and being. He describes these as the 4P’s of knowing: propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory.

Understanding these forms of knowing shows us how meaning is woven into our daily lives. It also clarifies why practices like Soulplay card games can support the search for a more meaningful existence.

The 4P’s of Knowing

1. Propositional Knowing

This is the knowledge of facts and statements. For example, knowing that “gratitude improves well-being.” It is abstract and descriptive. Useful, but often limited on its own.

2. Procedural Knowing

This is the knowledge of how to do something. It is skill-based. For example, practicing how to listen well in a conversation, or how to ask thoughtful questions.

3. Perspectival Knowing

This is the knowledge of what it is like to be in a situation. It is lived and contextual. For example, experiencing what it feels like to be vulnerable when sharing a story, or noticing the perspective of another person in dialogue.

4. Participatory Knowing

This is the deepest layer. It is the knowledge of being in dynamic relation with the world. It is how we recognize belonging, alignment, and connectedness. Participatory knowing is the ground of meaning.

How Soulplay Cards Embody the 4P’s

Soulplay card games are designed around these dimensions of knowing. They are not abstract theory; they are practical exercises in enacting meaning.

• Propositional: Cards invite reflection on values. Example: “Name one belief that guides how you treat others.” This makes personal truths explicit.

• Procedural: Players practice conversation skills. Example: “Listen silently for one minute as the other person shares.” Here, participants rehearse the discipline of attention.

• Perspectival: Prompts create mirroring between players. Example: “Share a moment when you felt like an outsider. After listening, reflect back what you understood.” This is perspectival knowing in action: stepping into another’s lived reality while holding up a mirror that helps them see themselves more clearly.

• Participatory: The group itself becomes dialogical. Example: a closing card might ask: “What truth feels shared among us tonight?” In this moment, the players are no longer just individuals exchanging answers. They are co-participants in a search for truth, sensing meaning that emerges only in relation.Through this layering, Soulplay cards transform play into a practice where meaning is enacted, not merely discussed.

Why This Matters

Modern life often collapses meaning into the propositional alone: facts, information, quotes, and advice. But information without participation feels hollow. People can know about gratitude, love, or resilience, yet still feel disconnected.

Practices like Soulplay restore the other dimensions of knowing. They move people from abstraction into lived experience, from loneliness into shared participation. The value lies not in the answers written on the cards, but in the transformation that happens between people when they engage with them.

In Rabat and Casablanca, Soulplay sessions create this possibility face-to-face. For those abroad, Soulplay Cards offer a similar chance at home. Each round of play is small, but together they nurture the participatory knowing that makes life meaningful.

Closing Thought

Finding meaning is not about solving a puzzle. It is about participating in life more fully. Vervaeke’s 4P’s help us see the dimensions of this participation. Soulplay creates a practical way to live them: through words shared, skills practiced, perspectives exchanged, and relationships felt.

Meaning does not arrive from outside. It is cultivated in the space between us, and play provides one of the simplest paths back into it. Soulplay sessions in Rabat and Casablanca were created for exactly this. Through guided card games and the practice of serious play, they turn an ordinary evening into a participation in life itself.