WHAT IS LEISURE?

What is leisure depends on your point of view.

What is leisure for one is work for another and vice versa. To a car buff tinkering with an engine is leisure; to an auto mechanic this is work. A round of golf may be work for the professional golfer but for the sportsman it is leisure.

For most working Americans, leisure is something we have too little of. Yet if out of work or retired, it can become something we have too much of. Spending a large chunk of our lives so busy we hardly have any leisure only to be rewarded at the end of our work life with nothing but leisure isn’t healthy. Years of stress and anxiety lead to illness, while too much leisure produces boredom, depression, loss of vigor, loneliness and exclusion from the mainstream of society.

Before the advent of the hourly wage, work followed more natural rhythms. Artisans might put in a full day’s work on a rainy day; while on a sunny day spend only a few hours at their craft before going fishing or working in the garden. But the success of the industrial revolution demanded that the populous turn into staid and regimented workers. This was accomplished through the glorification of work.

Today our consumer economy continues to keep our noses to the grindstone, with the promise of happiness through possessions and status that require more and more money, obtained through more and more work.

Tom Hodgkinson, in his delightfully irreverent book How to Be Idle: A Loafer's Manifesto challenges the concept that industry, hard work, duty, self-sacrifice and toil are the virtues that lead to success. Instead, he attests such workaholism leads to anxiety, ill health and debt. “---not only is idleness good, but it is essential for a pleasurable life. Where do our ideas come from? When do we dream? When are we happy? It is not when staring at a computer terminal worrying about what our boss will say about our work. It is in our leisure time, our own time, when we are doing what we want to do.”

In our work obsessed society, leisure is often considered trivial and can only be perceived in relation to work; time off work, time to refresh oneself for work or a reward for work well done. To the ancient Greeks, leisure was the path to true potential. Aristotle professed, “The end of labor is to obtain leisure.” The contributions of the Greeks to drama, art, philosophy, government, music, literature and architecture, prove that leisure is far from frivolous.

The work ethic inherited from our founding fathers served us well when all hands were needed to clear and till the soil and everyone worked until their last ounce of strength was spent. Now, when leisure belongs to many of our most experienced citizens, this orientation is limiting. How do we measure success when working hard won’t get us ahead any longer and there are no more raises, promotions or titles to strive for?

No matter how leisure is viewed, its essential element remains time free from obligations. Leisure is the freedom to do as one chooses. The choice is up to us.