essential...................

 

     Play, which I would define as anything we do simply for the joy of doing rather than as a means to an end—whether it's flying a kite or listening to music or throwing a baseball—might seem like a nonessential activity.  Often it is treated that way.  But in fact play is essential in many ways.  Stuart Brown, the founder of the National Institute for Play, has studied what are called the play histories of some six thousand individuals and has concluded that play has the power to significantly improve everything from personal health to relationships to education to organizations' ability to innovate.  "Play," he says, "leads to brain plasticity, adaptability, and creativity."  As he succinctly puts it, "Nothing fires up the brain like play."

-Greg McKeown, essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Let us play...............

 

Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. In Utopia, said Thoreau, each would build his own home; and then song would come back to the heart of man, as it comes to the bird when it builds its nest. If we cannot build our homes, we can at least walk and throw and run; and we should never be so old as merely to watch games instead of playing them. Let us play is as good as Let us pray, and the results are more assured.

-Will Durant, as quoted here

license....................

 

. . . a playful attitude is fundamental to creative thinking.  I'll bet that you generate most of your new ideas when you're playing in your mental playground.  You give yourself license to try different approaches without fear of penalty.  Your defenses are down, and your likely to have little concern with the rules or being wrong.  You try one thing, and then another—often not getting anywhere.  You ask "what if" and "why not," put things is different contexts, and look at them backwards.  Eventually, you may come up with a worthwhile idea.

-Roger von Oech, A Whack on the Side of the Head

work or play...................

 

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play.

-attributed to Warren Beatty

surrounded....................

When working, surround yourself with people more successful that you.

When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you.

-Naval Ravikant 

artful..........................

 

Be artful with your knowledge.  We've all known people who knew many things but who never did anything very innovative with their learning.  Heraclitus realized that the key to being more creative is being able to work and play with our knowledge.  Using our knowledge is a lot like cooking.  Getting a satisfying result depends on what things we add together and how we mix them.

-Roger Von Oech, Expect the Unexpected (Or You Won't Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus

play.......................

 

. . . if you can play with the horizon of the future, you are indeed doing well.

-Jordan B. Peterson

play spirit.........................

 

To dare, to take risks, to bear uncertainty, to endure tension—these are the essence of play spirit.

-Johan Huizinga

a path....................

 Relaxing is not a waste of time—it's an investment in well-being. Breaks are not a distraction—they're a chance to reset attention and incubate ideas.  Play is not a frivolous activity—it's a source of joy and a path to mastery.

-Adam Grant, Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things

eternal........................

 We all know that something is eternal. And it ain’t houses and it ain’t names, and it ain’t earth, and it ain’t even the stars . . . everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you’d be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There’s something way down deep that’s eternal about every human being.

-The Stage Manager, channeling Thornton Wilder in Our Town

Yep..............................

"... there's something really beautiful about work that feels like play."

-Chip Gaines

Play....................................

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

 -George Bernard Shaw

On the importance of....................

..................................................making time for play:

via

Back when gods walked the earth....

...............................................................Coming of age tale here.

It is the Earth I remember (except, we played wiffle ball in Brooks's backyard:  ball hit against the second story was a double, on the roof a homer).

Zest..............................

“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.” 
-Sophia Loren

Math even I can understand................

If A is success in life, then A = x + y + z. 
Work is x, play is y and z is keeping your mouth shut.

-Albert Einstein

Pondering on the truth of this................

Play is pleasurable mental and physical competitive exercise where the issues involved are trivial and transient.  It is a fit preparation for more important tasks.  And it is the law of life that you only do those important tasks well at which you have played in childhood.

-Granville Stanley Hall

Leisure.......................

It will be said that, while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours of work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world, it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.

-Bertrand Russell, as extracted from his 1932 essay "In Praise of Idleness"

Us wingless bipeds.............................

      Not only is play a human cultural universal, but most animals are top-notch players too.  Whether  it a a pair of bear cubs splashing one another in a stream (where, judging by their mother's impatient reaction, they are supposed to be learning how to fish) or my dog, Snookers, running ever-expanding circles around the spruce tree in our yard back home - the animal instinct for aimless fun is clearly built in.  Ditto for us wingless bipeds, especially when we are still at that stage of life when notions of accomplishment and making something of ourselves have yet to put the damper on just plain fooling around.
      The transformation of pure play into competitive play - the ancient Greeks were Olympic champs at this - constituted one of the first such dampers.  We went from pointless play to keeping one eye on the scoreboard.  And our current dedication to sports as self-improvement, complete with personal trainers and strange garments made out of spandex, has virtually wiped out any lightheartedness remaining in play.  Even when taking a walk, distance and elapsed time are now often recorded, then measured against previous records as we compete with ourselves for our personal best.  Play is no longer something we do with our idle time, it is another ambitious activity crammed into our schedules.

-Daniel Klein,  Travels with Epicurus:  A Journey to a Greek Island in Search of a Fulfilled Life

cartoons via

Hidden..............................

"In every real man a child is hidden who wants to play."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

photo via