How do we see Leisure?

German philosopher Josef Pieper, author of Leisure, the Basis of Culture, describes how the meaning of leisure is distorted over time. He says, “What is normal is work, and the normal day is the working day.”

“The simple “break” from work — the kind that lasts an hour, or the kind that lasts a week or longer — is part and parcel of daily working life. It is something that has been built into the whole working process… The “break” is there for the sake of work.”

“Leisure, then, is a condition of the soul… since leisure is not necessarily present in all the external things like “breaks,” “time off,” “weekend,” “vacation,” and so on…” “Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as activity… there is leisure as “non-activity” — an inner absence of preoccupation, a calm, an ability to let things go, to be quiet.”

The mind-numbing scrolling of endless Facebook updates lures us to believe this is a leisurely activity. Or if we get a tad bit wiser, a zealous digital detox, makes us feel we are spending time in leisure. Yet if you examine closely we are merely renaming distraction as leisure. Because that is our only definition of turning away from the unpleasantness of the world.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

– Annie Dillard