Play:

"Play is, first and foremost, an expression of freedom. It is what one wants to do as opposed to what one is obliged to do."

Peter Gray, Free to Learn

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"The joy of play is the ecstatic feeling of liberty. Play is not always accompanied by smiles and laughter, nor are smiles and laughter always signs of play; but play is always accompanied by a feeling of Yes, this is what I want to do right now. ... Players not only choose to play or not to play, but they also direct their own actions during play."

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"The ultimate freedom in play is the freedom to quit. Because the players want to keep the game going, and because they know that other players will quit and the game will end if they are not happy, play is a powerful vehicle for learning how to please others while also pleasing oneself."

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"Research studies have shown repeatedly that adults who have a great deal of freedom as to how and when to do their work commonly experience that work as play, even—in fact, especially—when the work is difficult. In contrast, people who must follow others’ directions, with little creative input of their own, rarely experience their work as play."

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"To the degree that we engage in an activity purely to achieve some end, or goal, separate from the activity itself, that activity is not play. What we value most, when we are not playing, are the results of our actions. The actions are merely means to the ends. When we are not playing, we typically opt for the shortest, least effortful means of achieving our goal. The nonplayful student, for example, does the least studying that she can to get the “A” that she desires, and her studying is focused directly on the goal of doing well on the tests. Any learning not related to that goal is, for her, wasted effort."

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"Think of a cat preying on a mouse in contrast to a cat playing at preying on a mouse. The former takes the quickest route for killing the mouse. The latter tries various ways of catching the mouse, not all efficient, and lets the mouse go each time so it can try again. The preying cat enjoys the end; the playing cat enjoys the means. (The mouse, of course, enjoys none of this.) Another way of saying all this is to say that play is intrinsically motivated (motivated by the activity itself), not extrinsically motivated (motivated by some reward that is separate from the activity itself)."