Anthropologists have found “galumphing” to be one of the prime talents that characterize higher life forms. Galumphing is the immaculate rambunctiousness and seemingly inexhaustible play-energy apparent in puppies, kittens, children, baby baboons – and also in young communities and civilizations. Galumphing is the seemingly useless elaboration and ornamentation of activity. It is profligate, excessive, exaggerated, and uneconomical. We galumph when we hop instead of walk, when we take the scenic route instead of the efficient one, when we play a game whose rules demand a limitation of our powers, when we are interested in means rather than in ends. We voluntarily create obstacles in our path and then enjoy overcoming them. In the higher animals and in people, it is of supreme evolutionary value.
--Excerpt from "Free Play – Improvisation in Life and Art,"
by Stephen Nachmanovitch,
pp. 43 – 44, used with author’s permission.