The existence, the physical universe is basically playful.
存在、この世界は playful だ。
There is no necessity for it whatsoever. It isn’t going anywhere.
世界に”必要なこと”なんてなにもない。どこにも向かわない。
That is to say, it doesn’t have some destination that it ought to arrive at.
つまり、たどりつかなくてはならない目的地などない。
It is best understood by analogy with music. Because music, as an art form is essentially playful. We say you play the piano. You don’t work the piano.
音楽にたとえると分かる。音楽、芸術としての音楽は本質的に playful だ。”play the piano”とは言うが、”work the piano”とは言わない。
Why? Music differs from, say, travel. When you travel, you’re trying to get somewhere.
なぜか。音楽は travel （移動）とは違う。travel する時、人はどこかを目指している。
And of course we, because being compulsive and purposive culture, are busy getting everywhere faster, faster, and faster, till we eliminate the distance between places.
In music, though, one doesn’t make the end of a composition. If that were so, the best conductors would be those who played fastest. And there would be composers who wrote only finales. They would go to a concert just to hear one crashing chord. Because that’s the end!
ひるがえって音楽ではどうか。人は曲の終わりに向かっているわけではない。もしそうであったなら、速く演奏するのがもっとも素晴らしい指揮者ということになるし、作曲家はフィナーレしかかかない。聴衆は、ひとつの和音を聞くだけのためにコンサートに行く。なぜならそれが end （終わり/目的）だから。
Say when dancing. You don’t aim at a particular spot in the room that’s where you should arrive. The whole point of dancing is to dance.
Now, but we don’t see that as something brought by our education into our everyday conduct.
ところが、教育が私たちの日々の営みにもたらしているものは、このように捉えることができない。
We’ve got a system of schooling which gives a completely different impression. It’s all graded and what we do is, we put the child into the corridor. With a kind of, “Come on, kiddy, kiddy, kiddy” and they all go to kindergarten, and that’s a great thing because when you finish that you get to the first grade.
And then come on first grade leads to second grade and so on and then you get out of grade school you got high school, and it’s revving up, the thing is coming, then you’re going to go to college. And then graduate school, and when you’re through with graduate school, you go out to join the world.
Then you get into some racket where you’re selling insurance. And they’ve got that quota to make, and you’re gonna make that. And all the time that “thing” is coming. It’s coming, it’s coming. That great “thing.” The success you are working for.
Then you wake up one day about 40 years old. You say “My God, I’ve arrived.” And you don’t feel very different from what you’ve always felt. And there’s a slight letdown because you feel there’s a hoax. And there was a hoax! A dreadful hoax.
Look at the people who live to retire. They put those savings away. And then when they’re 65 they don’t have any energy left. They are more or less impotent. And they go rotten in old people, senior citizen’s community.
Because we simply cheated ourselves the whole way down the line.
人生の途上、自分たちをずっと騙してきたから。
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after your death.
