If you watch closely, you will see that a child can always find something to play with—a leaf, a stick, a piece of string. Children create games spontaneously because they understand that life is play.
To understand this deeply and simply, as a child does, requires you to forget the cares and concerns of adult life. To be with children is a joy to many people, but even those who can set aside their own sorrows for a moment to revel in the uncomplicated joy of a child may not be able to see the world like a child.
For the child, all is present. All is revealed. All is known. Those few things that a child knows are understood thoroughly and appreciated completely, with no part left over. Each of you comes into this world understanding the art of play, but gradually it slips through your fingers like water or sand. The creativity and sincerity of childhood gradually dwindles away. You turn your attention to other things and forget that the world is like a marble that rolls across the floor, a ball fashioned from rubber or string, or the doll you address as a playmate and move through various tales and adventures. That which you imagine as a child becomes the basis for a world.
That world is lost to you as you forget how to carry it lightly. To play with it, dance with it, and tell stories about it. To set it down and pick it up again as easily as you would a toy. I want to teach you to do all of this again. To return to that child’s world as an adult is to live with a simple faith in the rightness and beauty of every breath you take.”Post