Saturday, August 2, 2008

Work and Play

I was working a crossword puzzle and got to thinking about semetics, which led to the folloing musings about work and play.

Humans like to make a big deal of work and consign second place to play. Work is important. Play is not. Yet, if you look at the subject carefully, you'll see that work is acturally far in second place to play.

Consider the following. Anything we do beyond what is necessary to acquire the day's food is play. I base this statement on the fact that all life has to do something to acquire enough food to continue living. That can be considered work. Once a person has enough food to insure their continued existence for another day they have done all the work they actually need to do.

What about shelter? What about it? Many animals live all their lives without shelter. From birth to death they are completely at the mercy of the elements. There are places in this world where humans can survive without any artificial shelter. The fact we've learned to create such things allows us to move into enviroments that are hostile to us, but even there the effort to have shelter beyond that needed to allow us to survive has to be considered play.

What about clothing? Well, are there any other animals that we know of who create artifical colthing? Again clothing is something that allows us to move into and survive in hostile enviroments, but beyond the necessary clothing to achieve that? I say again it is play.

I am going to define play as anything that involves keeping score in some fashion. And the fact is almost everything humans do is to rack up points on some scoreboard to prove to other humans they are winning the game. Therefore almost everything we do is really play.

Lazy Trainer Tip

If you are getting stressed because of the current economic conditions ask yourself these questions. Do I have enough to feed myself and my family? Can I provide them with shelter from the elements of this enviroments? Do all of us have clothing to further protect us?

If your answers to these questions is yes then you need to step back and look at just how much the rest of it is scorekeeping on a giant playboard.

1 comment:

~Barb said...

I recently spent three days out of town for work. It was a six hour drive one way. That gave me plenty of time to think. My mind went on a similar path during the drive...what is really a necessity these days? Honestly, not much. Too many luxuries have taken on the "look" of necessities.

Great job of boiling it all down to the basics!