I recently did a book club at work, reading the book Being Wrong. At one point the book shared some research that supported the notion that children largely engage in play as a method of flirting with error and mistake making. Mistakes made in play are easily forgiven and quickly learned from. Adults play progressively less because there are fewer safe areas in which we can regularly err.

Whether that line of logic is accurate or not, it did help me to realize that in my own life I have very few opportunities to test my (mis)understandings of the world around me and find where I'm wrong. I desperately hide in my safe zones.

I've recently found reading books a good way to create fresh safe zones where I can view the world from different perspectives and test my beliefs. People of all different sorts in all different cultures from nearly all time periods have written books, and often written them well enough to transport the reader into their reality. It may not be "play", but I'm greatly enjoying the diverse worlds I have recently been reading myself into.

I don't find many internet writings to have this level of depth that allows me to rethink myself as I read.