WORK AS PLAY by Alan Watts

Alan Watts, on treating work as play.

“This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” ~ Alan Watts

I happen to be a lover of archery. But I don’t like archery for killing things. I like it as a sport. What is it that fascinates us about that? It’s not useful. It doesn’t achieve anything that we would call ‘purposive work‘. It simply is what we call ‘play‘.

But in our culture, we make an extremely rigid division between work and play. You’re supposed to work in order to earn enough money to give you sufficient leisure time for something entirely different called ‘having fun’ or ‘play’.

Imagine if you were a bus driver. Bus driver is ordinarily considered an absolutely harassed person. He’s got to watch out for all the laws, all the competing traffic, the cops, people coming on board, giving their fares and he has to give them change… If he has it in his head that this is work, it will be hell.

But let’s suppose he has a different thing in his head.

Supposing he has this idea that moving this enormous conveyance through complicated traffic is a very, very subtle game. And he has the same feeling about it that you might have if you were playing the guitar or dancing. So he goes through that traffic, avoiding this, avoiding that, taking a fair like this… And he makes a music of the whole thing. He’s not going to be tired out at the end of the day. He’s going to be full of energy when he gets through his job.

You can do everything you have to do in this spirit. Don’t make a distinction between work and play. Regard everything that you’re doing as play and don’t imagine for one minute that you’ve got to be serious about it.