I have often looked and seen in nature programmes what biologists think is animals playing but there is no animal who plays and seeks out entertainments as often as human beings. Partly as a result of our brains needing to learn how to ‘game’, and partly because team work is a learned skill and games help us to bond and partly, it seems, out of sheer boredom.
It is quite a strange behaviour to go to a theatre to ‘be entertained’, or to watch other people dance or otherwise show their skills at some form of movement. We gain a lot from it, we gain appreciation, understanding and a measure of time passed. But it is an interesting part of our minds that we take these forms as relaxation and blue-collar work and all we do in the work place as labour. Almost as if going to see people show their skills, taking part in games, has now an added attraction that it helps us take our minds off what we do at work – which seems an even stranger outcome to the way in which we live. Surely we should want to think about what we do for most of our lives, in times of reflection, so we can better prepare ourselves for working?
Instead we seem to work to earn the money to enjoy ourselves.