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We are mostly conditioned to think of play as something that belongs to childhood. After all, we might watch sports on television, but to engage in it if we aren't professional athletes is generally ridiculed. Similarly, playing cards can be fun but it is only glamorized if there's betting involved. So play for playing, or any other non-economic goal is generally considered negative.
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To me this seems wrong. In fact, the whole dichotomy between work and play seems misplaced. True, one does work for the purpose of making money or maintaining a lifestyle ideally, and play is for gaining other things but generally amusement. But that's just on the surface. A boxer defending his title in a match is definitely going through more stress than a painter in his studio, but we would say the boxer is playing a game and the painter is at work. I believe the correct way to see this split is that play and work are really just a continuation of each other.
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The human mind inherently desires activity. It is creative, destructive, frivolous, serious, thoughtful, and whimsical all in different turns. Dividing work and play into totally different spheres disrupts the true nature of the human mind. There is always some play in work and some work in play. Again, making play as something that only children do and work as something only adults do is detrimental to both.
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The amount of effort that even young children put into their play shows that even children have the same drives to be serious and thoughtful at times, while adults have deep and often unfulfilled desires to have their creative, destructive, nonsensical and fundamentally playful energies unleashed. Of course there are enormous individual differences and differences between age groups. But these differences are small in comparison to the similar patterns all people share.
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Most importantly, play and work are equally essential to everyone throughout their lives, and should not be segregated to certain classes or age groups. In order to have a healthy society, we should encourage everyone to both play and work as much as possible.