“All work an no play makes Jack a dull boy.” It’s one of those life-truths that we all know, but which I slowly, increasingly, failed to heed. Doing some things mattered to get to some goals. Other things didn’t seem directly related. Choice by choice is how a life gets made.

Today’s world is a deeply utilitarian one, where everything must have a use or be ‘good for something’. Our lives are dominated by work and, unless we have been extraordinarily lucky, we work not because we particularly enjoy it but to get paid — payment that keeps us and our loved ones alive for a while and, if there is anything left over, allows us to do something more interesting than the work. Our lives are spent, largely, doing one thing for the sake of something else, which is in turn done for something else.

~ Mark Rowlands from, https://aeon.co/essays/it-is-play-and-not-work-that-gives-life-meaning

It’s not that the things I chose to do became less fun—more ‘good for something’… No. It’s that I was choosing. Play happens in that liminal space where the “yes, and…” of improvisation is the only choice.

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