Play isn't you being clever, or finding a trick, or finding a way of covering over your own misery, or persuading someone to do what you want. It's the process of working with the materials that you find and discovering what's possible with them.

We have so many choices that it's only always our fault if we're malcontent.

The universe is not particularly concerned with you.

If you think of play as being in things, there are things that are playable, then it becomes the work of figuring out what a thing can do.

The idea of thinking of our relationships with people as also being structured by limitations and constraints can be useful.

My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.

The whole idea of play is in finding, acknowledging, and then working with the natural constraints and limitations that you find in the world.