Play is the signature of childhood. It’s a living, visible manifestation of imagination and learning in action. It’s also the most visible sign of the paradoxically useful uselessness of immaturity. By definition, play—the baby nesting blocks and pushing the buttons of a busy box, the toddler pretending to be everything from a mermaid to a ninja—has no obvious point or goal or function. It does nothing to advance the basic evolutionary goals of mating and predation, fleeing and fighting. And yet these useless actions—and the adult equivalents we squeeze into our workday—are distinctively,
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