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"A man's maturity: that is to have rediscovered the seriousness he possessed as a child at play."
(Nietzsche, 1886, Beyond Good and Evil)

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My connection to play started as most of us: with role-playing as a young child. In the 1980s, during the tremendous Israeli economic crisis, when I was nine years old, my family moved to a new building in a new city. Like many other business people at the time, the contractor declared bankruptcy in the middle of construction. The first few stories of the building remained skeletal. The building resembled a construction site; scattered bricks, boards, mounds of sea sand, half walls, abandoned personal belongings of construction workers, and plenty of construction materials as part of the local scenery. This abandoned construction site was a fertile, adventurous ground for us, the neighborhood kids. My childhood is filled with magical memories of that time when we would split into camps of knights, entrench ourselves in the stories of the building, build accessorized forts out of the many materials, dress up with the workers' clothes, and go on missions intended to occupy the castle on the next floor up. I have no words to describe the intoxicating sense of joy and superb satisfaction that overtook me after every such adventure. Even today, as a father, when I walk with my children and see a house being built, I invite them in to tour the maze of rooms and feel my imagination soar by itself without my control.