Play

On that day, Jake gave a compact demonstration of what years of academic and clinical research has taught me about the power of play. Most obviously, it is intensely pleasurable. It energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.

These properties are what make play, for me, the essence of freedom. The things that most tie you down or constrain you—the need to be practical, to follow established rules, to please others, to make good use of time, all wrapped up in a self-conscious guilt—are eliminated. Play is its own reward, its own reason for being.

Another hallmark of play is that it has improvisational potential. We aren’t locked into a rigid way of doing things. We are open to serendipity, to chance. We are willing to include seemingly irrelevant elements into our play. The act of play itself may be outside of “normal” activities. The result is that we stumble upon new behaviors, thoughts,

We also need the purpose of work, the economic stability it offers, the sense that we are doing service for others, that we are needed and integrated into our world. And most of us need also to feel competent. Even people who are independently wealthy and never need to work a day in their lives find that they need to volunteer or donate to good cau

The play-driven pleasures associated with exploratory body movements, rhythmic early speech (moving vocal cords), locomotor and rotational activity are done for their own sake; they are pleasurable and intrinsically playful. Yet they also help sculpt the brain.

Part of the license to play freely comes from being in an environment that is structured enough to provide a feeling of safety, so that the child is confident that nothing bad is going to happen.

We strive to always be productive, and if an activity doesn’t teach us a skill, make us money, or get on the boss’s good side, then we feel we should not be doing it. Sometimes the sheer demands of daily living seem to rob us of the ability to play.

We grow out of childhood and leave behind “childish things.” We feel that we shouldn’t act this way anymore, and get a sort of willful amnesia for pure play experiences. Seeing a child like Leo reminds us of the joy we may be leaving behind. I talk a lot about play in children, but it’s interesting to me that the focus of the conversation often com

This leads to . . . Surprise, the unexpected, a discovery, a new sensation or idea, or shifting perspective. This produces . . . Pleasure, a good feeling, like the pleasure we feel at the unexpected twist in the punch line of a good joke. Next we have . . . Understanding, the acquisition of new knowledge, a synthesizing of distinct and separate con