Boxer the Horse

From childhood onwards people are entrusted with the care of their honor, their property, their friends, and even with the property of their friends.  They are showered with duties, the need to learn languages and exercises.  They are led to believe that they will never be happy if their health, honor, and wealth, and those of their friends, are not in a satisfactory state, and that if one element is amiss they will be unhappy.  So they are given offices and duties which keep them hectically occupied from daybreak.  You may well observe that it is an odd way to make them happy.  What more could we do to make them unhappy?  What do you mean, what could we do?  We would only have to remove all these preoccupations from them because they would then see and think about what they are, where they come from, where they are going.  So you cannot give them too much to do, too much to distract them, and that is why, after creating so many duties for them, if they have some spare time they are advised to amuse themselves, play games, keep themselves totally occupied--

(Pascal, Pensees 171)