Animals deprived of play become anxious, brittle, and socially clumsy — which, as Nasreddin would note, describes a surprising number of very successful adults. The play debt accumulates quietly and is paid in ways we rarely recognize as play-related: in rigidity, in humorlessness, in the inability to tolerate uncertainty without panic. What we call 'burnout' is sometimes just the overdue invoice from a childhood game we were told to stop playing.
Each step builds on the last.