Recreation is about so much more than a bit of physical activity, says Billie Jean King

“Recreation means to ‘recreate’ — it’s spiritual. Think about the actual word. It’s fascinating what a beautiful word it is when you look it up in the dictionary.”
— Billie Jean King

One of the greatest athletes of the 20th century, Billie Jean King remains a force to this day. The quote above comes from an interview with an ESPN columnist published in 2010.

King is right. The roots of the word “recreation” go back to Latin, and the verb recreare, which means to create again. The word travelled through the centuries into other languages, evolving in modern English to connote having fun, or in the Oxford Languages sense, “activity done for enjoyment when one is not working.”

The phrase “rec room” — a domestic form of the types of formal “recreation rooms” found in institutions — became popular in the early Sixties, right in time for my post-Boomer generation.

While I doubt many people connect rec rooms with anything spiritual, I like how King focuses on the intention behind the word. And she is right: there is something spiritual when we recreate ourselves, digging into our health and wellbeing, finding a better version of ourselves.