Nothing More is Needed: play

Today's installment of Nothing More is Needed continues the first section on Fundamentals with some notes on the importance of play. I've posted this one before, with a wonderful photo of my neighbour cat, Jasper, playing like a kitten with a multicoloured ball of yarn.

Play is so important to our health and well-being, yet it's so overlooked — or dismissed entirely — in the typical approach to business, and to life in general, that I think this one bears repeating.

Enjoy!

Play

i

Play is as essential to life

As work.

?

In fact, play may be fundamentally

What life is all about, what life is up to.

Why else all the exuberant variety,

All the splendid silliness?

?

ii

Work that is playful is blessed.

Play that is productive is blessed.

But play that is purposeless

Is divine.

?

Its purpose is in its purposelessness,

Its pointlessness, its end unto itself.

Its purpose is in its lightness, its freedom,

For therein is its life.

?

iii

Do wild animals play?

Need you even ask?

?

Consider the otter,

Idling down the stream on his back,

His furry little tummy soaking up the sun.

?

Consider the hawk,

Wings outstretched, paragliding

Lazily on a thermal updraft and gazing for miles.

?

Consider the fox cubs

Playing dungeons and dragons

While their mother looks on, kind, indulgent, smiling.

Need I go on?

?

iv

Play often. And to the best of your ability,

Provide your animals with plenty of opportunities

For play. Silly, pointless, purposeless play.

For therein one savors the essence of life.

?

My dog and her friends taught me this, the

Essentiality of play, and how to throw oneself Wholeheartedly into play, as if

Our very lives depend upon it.

?

Oh, the sorrowful expression on her face

When I say I don’t have time for play today.

I think she feels very sorry for me at these times.

I think she may be right.

(Amazing how she knows best.)

? 2011, Christine M. King. All rights reserved.

Nothing More is Needed: on caring for our animals (and ourselves) is available in print at:

animabooks.com.au

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