Play Without Meaning

Metaphorical Narrative

A child dips fingers into bright paints, smearing colours across a page. There is no masterpiece to be judged, no curve to improve on, no audience to satisfy. Just colour, texture, and laughter.

Core Insight

Ego insists on attaching meaning: sloppy versus elegant, progress versus waste. But presence finds joy in raw sensation. Paint doesn’t need to become anything to be real.

Play is sovereign when it is stripped of all optics. It exists because you chose it, not because it impresses.

Saturday Experiment

Set aside 10 minutes for purposeless play — doodle, hum, scribble, or stack objects. Let nothing “useful” come from it.

Sunday Reflection

How did the third person observing describe the act? Did they try to assign meaning? Write how they were wrong.