Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness

by Ingrid Fetell Lee

“The need to play is in us,” he said after we’d gotten settled, “and if we don’t do it, we’re in trouble.” He came to this conclusion via an unlikely route. Years ago, he had been tasked with studying convicted murderers in the Texas prison system, in an effort to understand whether there were factors that could make a person susceptible to violent behavior. He and his team took comprehensive inventories of the criminals’ lives, conducting detailed interviews, consulting their friends and families, and comparing them with a well-matched noncriminal control population. After sifting through all this information, they noticed a surprising common thread. “Nearly all of these violent offenders had deficient or deviant play histories,” said Brown. Some had abusive parents with volatile tempers or strict parents who set harsh rules. Others were socially isolated. For a variety of reasons, their childhoods were marked by a severe absence of play.