Play provides a way for humans to slide between the categories within which we live. And in that time space, we're not members of those categories. And it's almost as if in that space, in that time space, we aren't men, women, white, black, Americans, South-Africans, and so on. And that's a genius that creation gave us. Now we've taken most of the genius and crimped it, making our little boxes, but it's still there.

There have been times I cried about it.  I just say, what in the world is happening to me?  This is really stupid Fred.  Just go back to being a University Professor, buy your Porsche again, because this is craziness.  And recently I'm continually reminded of the statements,

I think it's at least twice in the Bible which Christ said to go to the children and I keep thinking, why did he say that? Was that just a metaphor he was saying? Then in my readings I've read many other sages who have said, Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching) and Rama Krishna and Gandhi have all said go to the kids, in one way or another. But they never say why. And no one's ever done it.  As a race of beings we have never done what these wise men and women have told us to do. I said, what is it then? And it finally dawned on me. Well of course, that's the sense of belonging. And the reason they don't tell us why is if you do it, you know why. You feel it. You don't need to be told. 

And it is not as if I am saying, although part of me may like it, in one stroke wipe out this competitive economy and everything base on it. It is like, again in the Bible, give to Caesar his due and God his due. In essence, first things first.

When I play with gang members, I don't tell them not to be gang members. I don't go in as Fred and say put down the guns and do all that kind of talk. What I say to them is I want you to be safer on the streets. We think that contest is out best way to survive, kind of fight/flight, that sort of idea and it's been ingrained in us. So what I'm trying to say to gang members is there's a safer way to be, safer than fight/flight. And I can present that to you, and that's play. So what I want is them to be safer on the streets and literally going out onto the street as a playmate means that there's less chance that the young man is going to reach when he hears a car or something, less chance he's going to reach for a gun, which means there's less chance that a two year old is going to get shot. So just his sense of serenity keeps him safer on the street. So in a way, a very practical, real, tangible way, I present play as a way, whether it's an environment in a corporate office, gangs on the street, in a classroom with all kinds of children, is to keep humans safer. Once we're safer, you mean I don't need to defend myself? Okay. If I don't need to defend myself, than you don't need to defend yourself from me. Oh, okay. Now we can focus our energy on being together and not defending. So it's, in a way play is going around to all environments now and not saying okay let's just erase all the environments, but how can I go into that environment just as it is and go in as a playmate and use play to establish safety? Because I know that once you're safe, you're not going to dissipate your energy in self-defense, than it's a whole lot easier for us to communicate, to love, to be kind with each other and do those things that we, I think we'd really rather do than hurt or defend.

The way I describe it now, to have a metaphor for all this; play provides a way for humans to slide between the categories within which we live. And in that time space, we're not members of those categories. And it's almost as if in that space, in that time space, we aren't men, women, white, black, Americans, South-Africans, and so on. And that's a genius that creation gave us. Now we've taken most of the genius and crimped it, making our little boxes, but it's still there. And what I find is if I can structure an environment in play in such a way that humans will kind of like Alice, fall back into the hole, and when they're in it, they're just there. It's like being in a dream and not being in a dream. When you're in the dream, you are just in the dream. You're not both in the dream and not dreaming. Having experienced play, once you then leave it and you're back being male, white, and the culture I live in, I both am here, realize okay I'm living in this culture, but I had an experience that took me out. I said oh, I can go back there. There is a way to slide between all of the frames that the culture provides me. 

So now I just need to figure out how do I slide back? And that's one of the ways that, one of the benefits that I see for children because they so quickly allow us a kind of a slip-stream between the categories of culture. It doesn't take much in a group of very sophisticated adults, all dressed in business type suits, for someone to walk in with an infant and then the moment, a smiles come, what happened? What's going on there? We slipped for a minute. That the child provides us a way to slip out of the categories. I often thought that if I could take a special needs child, like a child with Down-Syndrome or Autism and put one, a very young one, in every board room of every corporation in the United States, those board rooms would go much more efficiently because what it allows us to do is to slide out of the categories we get so attached in and we spend so much time in meetings, sitting down in our little categories, trying to defend them and worry about what the other people on that table are doing against my category. That's incredibly inefficient.