Learn and play should be the main goals of life.
I omitted work on purpose. Because work is part of life, a significant part. Popular cliche of “work-life balance” and “separating work from life” are just false promises. I also ignored tremendous amount of chores that you will never call it playing or learning, such as washing dishes, commuting to work and those mundane tasks at work. No, you can’t escape from them, but you don’t live for them. You live to learn and play.
Doing new things, meeting new friends, visiting to new places, overcoming new challenges, acquiring new skills, are learning. It’s rewarding in and of itself. Learning can’t just be the intention and efforts, but also demands the outcome. You don’t learn by reading 10 pages of a book, you can only learn from that 10 pages after you digest its content, blend it with your experience and eventually absorb it into your own thoughts and life. So it requires intention, efforts and outcome. You learn and then you changed physically, mentally, or spiritually.
When an endeavour is carried out with good faith, in a joyful and engaging way, it’s playing. Just like a child, when he is playing, he is doing it for the sake of doing it. Honesty, focus, enthusiasm are at full display. Play is an optimal state in which you lose the sense of time and surrender the control to the game. If a game is fun to play, you will keep find new discoveries. Otherwise, you will be bored soon. In another word, you can’t play unless you learn.
Learn and play might be the same thing emphasising on different aspects of the optimal state of life.