There are also many things my wife can't stand about me, and there are certain capacities that she has that are different than mine. The trick is to ….

Play becomes a distraction, something you don't really need to do. It's not for serious people. They work hard, they don't play hard. Yes, you can sa….

You don't want to be told, "Hey, do whatever you want." That's what we think of when we think of play. It's the thing where you get to do whatever yo….

When we use this word fun, it sort of bangs up the ordinary and the extraordinary altogether..

God will not speak to me and tell me to mow my lawn today..

Normally we think of play as the opposite of work. Work is the thing you have to do, and then there's play, the thing you choose to do..

If you think of play as being in things, there are things that are playable, then it becomes the work of figuring out what a thing can do..

We're used to thinking of fun as a sort of synonym for light pleasure..

Generally speaking, when people use the word fun, it's like a placeholder. You know, "How was your evening?" "Oh it was fun.".

You can experience play at work, not because you're messing around or wasting time or something, but because you're looking really deeply and serious….

Our ideas of happiness, gratification, contentment, satisfaction, all demand that those feelings come from within us. If you flip that on its head an….

Forcing your spouse to stop doing that bad habit that drives you crazy, or making your kid be better at math or at art or at swimming, or making your….

If you start the day not really expecting substantial change, but anticipating some small new revelation or some small alteration, then over time you….

I think a lot of the misery that people experience comes from that sensation of boundlessness, of infinite possibility..

We have been trained to think we have enormous power over the world. Whatever you dream, you can do. Anything can be bent to your will. But actually ….

My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or….

The problem with fun is we really don't know what fun means at all..

Actually a lot of the supposedly serious and meaningful and worthwhile content on the podcast or on the television is no more or less meaningful than….

Looking for meaning in the ordinary seems like the most urgent thing that we can do..

I think this dichotomy or opposition between work and play, between leisure and serious stuff, is definitely a bad way of thinking about the useful i….

With sports and games, you have fun despite working very hard, even despite failing repeatedly. Even the fun of a night out, you have to get somewher….