Leisure needs work

Going on vacation in the benign summer month of January is something many South Africans enjoy. A break from the daily routine is important whenever we are overburdened with work and worry. January is the favoured month because schools and universities are in summer recess, and extended families can take advantage of this.

More than in the past, working people find the grind of their routines increasingly demanding and burdensome. Instead of “snail mail” there is now little chance to take a breath before the next e-mail, text message or television feature crashes into both our workaday and our relaxing moments. There is peer pressure to goad people to follow trends that will ensure they have the stamp of approval of today’s technocracy.

In other words, even our moments away from our place of employment or profession are taken up with a kind of work. We must respond to the demands on our time, leaving few free moments to feel like a free human agent in a world of beauty.

The philosophical writer Josef Pieper wrote in his work Leisure: the Basis of Culture, that work is not an absolute value that defines us in any specific career path. Leisure, too, is not an absolute, and we cannot say that when we are not at work we are at leisure and vice versa. Because of the unity of the human person, work and leisure ought to complement each other to the good of the individual?s healthy development. The traditional Catholic attitude to work and leisure is rooted in this principle. The human person is one, composed of a physical body and spiritual soul, described sometimes as our capacity to have our feet on the earth and our heads in the heavens.

Fatigue, whether physical or mental, afflicts all who forget that work has its limits and that leisure is not a way of resting from it but keeping the person well balanced. St Francis of Assisi called his body “Brother Ass”, and said that like every ass it had to have its rest otherwise it would not do its work.

Leisure is a combination of ease, rest and amusement. It is neither idleness nor sloth. To take our leisure is not to be passive, not to absorb our modern culture of consumerism. It is, rather, the effort to be creative, or recreative, employing our mind and body to explore life around us, in such ways as hobbies, sports, reading and writing, gardening and family outings.

Leisure is a way of self-discovery and self-development, keeping our free time and work time in harmony, so that mind and body are well adjusted to the world and those who share it with us.

Taking a vacation ideally is a social activity. People who play games or enjoy the communal atmosphere of stadiums, theatres and clubs find the pleasure of being with others an important element of leisure. Those who relax for too long on their own, avoiding others, will not have their minds stimulated enough to think in new directions, which in turn eases the strain of being laden with thoughts of our jobs and their problems.

Our world provides not only work but also many opportunities of enjoyable, restful and refreshing ways of being sensitive to Mother Nature, and learning about how beautiful and generous she is.

Technology is essential for world progress, but the human soul needs more than that. It must feel that, even amid material things, it is part of a non-material world of ideas and imagination, music and art, God and eternity. True leisure helps us to understand this and reminds us that technology is transient and the human soul is not.

William H Davies in his poem Leisure wrote: “What is life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?”