Normally we think of play as the opposite of work. Work is the thing you have to do, and then there's play, the thing you choose to do.

God will not speak to me and tell me to mow my lawn today.

I think a lot of the misery that people experience comes from that sensation of boundlessness, of infinite possibility.

I think the most important thing to realize about play is that it's this thing that's in stuff, it's not in you.

It's helpful to be prepared to celebrate the tiny things that you can do, where you meet the world and you negotiate an outcome that's quite tiny. But you can still make it feel remarkable.

Any phrase that suggests play is this domain that's the opposite of work, or the thing that you do when you're done working, should trouble us. Because it means that play is always relegated to the exhaust of life. It's the thing that you do after you do the important stuff, it's what you do on your own time.

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.