We have to always spread sugar on top of it in order that we can tolerate swallowing the things we're supposed to do, which is an incredibly depressing way of thinking about living your life. Not just that your work or your home life would be so miserable that you have to slather sugar on it, but then the sugar is all you're tasting. If that's the only way that I'm finding meaning, then we have this sort of mental diabetes that we're descending into.

Forcing your spouse to stop doing that bad habit that drives you crazy, or making your kid be better at math or at art or at swimming, or making your parents or your in-laws not be annoying in the way that they're annoying, these are sometimes doomed goals.

The playful perspective is not meant to turn your life into a game or a jungle gym. It's rather that the activity is looking outside of yourself.

You allow yourself to discover the things that are already there when you play.

If you think about the contexts in which we talk about things being fun, often there's a certain kind of misery or effort that's involved with it. The difficulty of travel, getting all your bags packed and your work done and navigating the airports and all that. That sort of struggle.

Fun has to do with habitual activities but then also terrifically novel or unusual ones. It works as a sort of strange milkshake of those concepts.

Wouldn't we all rather have the possibility of finding pleasure and delight in literally anything we might encounter? Instead of assuming that actually there are only these three things where pleasure and delight are possible. Like oh, it's television and socialization and work, and then everything else is the smoke I have to somehow choke my way through in order to get to the good parts.