Leisure

It's deeper than we thought

The words work and leisure have meanings that we’ve accepted. We go to work and are paid for our time. A broader definition of work says it is done with purpose, toward a goal. Making dinner, performing a surgery, creating a project plan, changing a diaper, and teaching all have an end goal in mind and all are work. Sometimes work provides a paycheck.

Leisure, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult to define. Is leisure the same as rest? Not quite. Rest is the physical restoration of your body and/or mind, while leisure is an active enriching of your body, mind and soul. Is it useful? Absolutely. Is an accurate view of leisure necessary for a healthy culture? According to Josef Pieper’s classic book first published in 1948, Leisure: The Basis of Culture, as the title implies, it most certainly is.

Pieper, in the 1940s, saw a culture in which everything revolved around work, a world of work, and he saw leisure as a state of mind, a condition of the soul, an attitude that more clearly understood reality.

He believed that true leisure transcends work and enables us to perceive what is. A person, place or thing is not defined as serviceable or not, nor is its value a factor; it simply exists. It was his opinion that the human need to understand reality, what is, forms the basis of worship, celebration, and culture.

Culture depends for its very existence on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and consequently living link with…divine worship.

When we realize that no amount of human work will ever create a sunset, we will appreciate, even celebrate, its beauty. We can marvel and worship over a flower, a baby or a magnificent landscape. And what are we, but human beings created in the image of God? When we acknowledge who we are in reality, in God’s eyes, we will worship the one who does what no human can possibly do. We did not create ourselves. We cannot create a sunset. Pieper’s view of leisure is an ability to recognize and interact with reality, what is.

In late adulthood, many of us have been given leisure time in abundance.

Pieper noticed that he lived in a world that was a ‘leisureless culture of total work.’ If that was true in the 1940s, it is even more obvious today. We value careers based on how much money they will bring us, leisure time is seen as nothing more than preparing us to go back to work. He rejects that idea of leisure and takes us deeper into a new vision of what leisure could be.

In late adulthood we may feel like we worked “in order to be at leisure.” No longer participating in the “leisureless culture of total work,” we now have an opportunity to transcend our cultural bias toward utilitarianism and develop a mindset of leisure.

To do this right we need a correct definition of leisure.

And even the history of the word attests the fact: for leisure in Greek is skole, and in Latin scola, the English “school”. The word used to designate the place where we educate and teach is derived from a word which means “leisure”. “School” does not, properly speaking, mean school, but leisure.

Leisure is active, perceiving, thinking, acting on what is real. Looking at leisure from that angle, it is like school. It is not a long list of entertainment or travel. It is not the same as scrolling through Instagram or flipping streaming services on TV to observe virtual, many unreal, images, stories and memes. It is searching for your full identity, understanding your soul, seeing the world as it is, the good, bad and ugly.

Because wholeness is what man strives for, the power to achieve leisure is one of the fundamental powers of the human soul. Like the gift for contemplative absorption in the things that are, and like the capacity of the spirit to soar in festive celebration, the power to know leisure is the power to overstep the boundaries of the workaday world and reach out to superhuman, life-giving existential forces that refresh and renew us before we turn back to our daily work. Only in genuine leisure does a “gate to freedom” open.

A superhuman, life-giving existential force sounds a lot like God. If we use our leisure time to become closer to him, to see reality through his eyes, we will find the elusive gate to freedom and use our leisure time well.

We live in a world in which work, wealth, influence and status are what many, if not most, people strive for, and Pieper’s book turns that on its head. Instead of working for wealth, we should leisurely seek to understand reality, to see things as they are.

The Teacher who wrote Ecclesiastes searched for meaning in pleasure, diligent work, and wisdom. He denied himself nothing, and upon review, he realized that it’s all chasing after the wind.

He finally saw things as they were, and he concluded that,

So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Ecclesiastes 8:15

Perhaps we in late adulthood can live in the deeper vision that Pieper proposed, and the Teacher discovered, and experience more of a superhuman, life-giving existential force. May we leisurely enjoy God’s good gifts.

I admit, I’m still processing the idea of leisure being more of an attitude than activities. What we do may not change so much as why and in whose power we do it. What do you think?

Photo by Peter Herrmann on Unsplash

Quotes are from Leisure: The Basis of Culture: Including the Philosophical Act by Josef Pieper, James V. Schall

If you’re interested, check out these articles:

Therese Cory delivers “Book that Changed My Life” Lecture on Josef Pieper

On Pieper’s Leisure and Living Well