Playing at Life

or, how to stop working

It is easy to see life as work - a serious undertaking in which we strive for professional accomplishments, meaningful relationships, moral rectitude and so on.

There is nothing wrong with these goals but they can easily turn living into a joyless, burdensome and difficult task. Life can easily become hard work.

There is an alternative to this “life is work” mentality. I’ve found it in two very different places: the atheistic philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the philosophical theology of Kashmir Shaivism.

They both offer us the idea that life is play.

Nietzsche: Against The Spirit of Gravity