Stuart Brown

It's as basic as sleep and nutrition.

It just doesn't necessarily produce the same outcome as hunger or fatigue.

But the need to play is there in all of us, and we all have deficits when we don't experience it sufficiently.

The play-deficient rats have the inability to socialize as well as those who have played, so that play itself is seen as a necessity for rat health and rat pack socialization.

So that there is a kind of a play fingerprint that I would call the play personality character.

that emerges.

It's not scientific.

This is not something that we're measuring with a series of neurotransmitters, but it's a clustering of what really gives you a sense of joy and engagement and sustained motivation.

One of the people that we picked out that's a celebrity director is Oprah.

Was there a moment?

Was there a circumstance?

Was there a situation?

that allowed you to really feel like you were yourself, whether you were four years old or 40.

It's easy to lose a sense of an experience which is in itself wondrous,

by demanding that the experience produce outcome.

And for many, many people living in a violent neighborhood, being impoverished, having physical illness, this is not to make life just fun and games and play, it's not.

Life is challenging for all of us.

But the play nature that we have usually allows us to find within our lives

even in very difficult lives, moments of joyfulness.

And there on the step in front of me,