Playing isn’t just for kids. It’s how grown-ups remember they’re alive.

Play gets dropped somewhere in the move toward being useful, and what replaces it is activity with a purpose attached to it. Something goes missing in that trade. Doing a thing for no reason beyond liking it is how people stay recognisable to themselves under a lot of obligation.

Take an hour this week for something with no outcome, nothing recorded and nothing improving. Games, drawing badly, kicking a ball, whatever it was before you got serious about everything. If the hour feels indulgent, that feeling is the clearest argument for keeping it.