Q: Why do you hate leisure so much?
A: I get this question from people who wonder why I don't take vacations or why I like spending a holiday at work. Most of the time, they simply ask me why I like work so much, but it has become clear to them that it isn't love for work so much as hatred for leisure. This comes from my repeatedly decrying holidays where everyone is off work.
Clearly, this personal thing of mine has elevated itself to something damn near universal in my hierarchy of thinking. But I want it understood that I oppose laws banning leisure as much as I would oppose laws banning marriage even though I think marriage is stupid. I don't think anyone should force their personal values upon others.
My hierarchy works out something like this. There are things that are right just for me and no one else. This would be aesthetic choices. Others are the same way as you see a woman mortified to see another woman wearing the same outfit at a shindig. Other things are right for everyone. This would be choices like not smoking, refraining from drug abuse, working hard, etc. These would be my values, and I support and "enforce" them by making snide remarks and/or shunning people that I think are pieces of shit. Then, there are my moral values which are distinctly libertarian. You do not have the right to violate the life, liberty, and property of other individuals. I think people who do this should go to jail.
For me, the leisure thing is now in that middle category where it was in that bottom category. I think people who waste their time are on the same level as people who smoke or ride motorcycles without a helmet. They are idiots. I am with the Puritans in their condemnation of idleness.
This change came about as I was working on a chapter for The M List. It was this quotation from the Quaker John Woolman:
All this time I lived with my parents, and wrought on the plantation; and having had schooling pretty well for a planter, I used to improve myself in winter evenings, and other leisure times.
Reading that turned on a light bulb in my brain. I was struggling with a certain guilt over my leisure life, but I did not know how to remedy that guilt. I felt that I was somehow wasting my life, and I would be hit with a wave of sadness and depression over another lost weekend. The reason for this is because my leisure had no purpose. Work always has a purpose, so I could find relief there. But leisure is sometimes without purpose which is antithetical to the autotelic way which is the path of true happiness.
The purpose of leisure is self-improvement. We confuse leisure with rest and talk about the need to relax. But you are never more relaxed than when you are asleep. I never feel guilt over sleep or naps because rest gets me ready for more work. It is no different than a lumberjack stopping to sharpen his ax. Leisure is not rest. Because people think it is rest, they end up doing nothing, and this nothing is intensely unsatisfying.
Leisure is that point between work and rest where we actually do sharpen the ax. For instance, I notice that my exercise and martial arts training has improved my experience at work because I have greater strength and stamina to perform my job. I would not have this strength and stamina if I opted to watch college bowl games instead of exercising. A compromise would be doing push ups and sit ups while watching college bowl games.
Leisure can still be fun. You can listen to music or play a game with friends or what have you. But the goal of leisure is self-improvement. As such, you make certain choices over other choices. This would be taking up running instead of golf. This would be learning kung fu over watching MMA. This would be learning Spanish or C++ instead of watching Kobe Bryant dunk a ball.
Self-improvement comes in two basic varieties. There is physical improvement and mental improvement. Physical improvement increases your cardiovascular system, your strength, and your flexibility. Mental improvement increases your mental skills, memory, and knowledge of the world. This means you can play a game of basketball or chess and feel pretty good about yourself. Getting drunk at the bowling alley is not quite as good.
I can't decide for people what constitutes self-improvement for them. This is person relative. For me, it means not wasting time watching ESPN. If you have two hours for a game, you have two hours to exercise. Similarly, I think watching movies or reading fiction is self-improving because of moral and philosophical education. Stories improve us, too, as they lend to moral education. Even the Puritans acknowledged this, and it is the subject of a future essay. Culture helps promote moral discourse, so you should feel fine even watching something as trivial as Animal House.
I'm not against having fun. Just knowing me or reading my blog should tell you that I love to have fun. I just think fun comes from having a meaning and purpose to all that you do. This includes sleeping and leisure. It is when activity has no purpose that the fun drains out of it for me.
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