A Life of Leisure

When I was in college I was a backpacking instructor with the Penn State Outing Club. In the academic department one could pursue a graduate degree program and take classes in something called "Leisure Studies." I assume it was just as it sounded--the academic discipline of studying how people spend their spare time and how to develop programs that cater to a society with a lot of free time on their hands. Cue the "underwater basketweaving" jokes.

Leisure is something relatively new in the past hundred years. It used to be that people had to work a lot, whether in fields or factories, just to have enough to eat. Cooking, cleaning, laundering, and taking care of the livestock and homestead occupied much of any free time that might be left over. In the post-war 1950's you started seeing ads for "convenience" items like dishwashers and washing machines to make life easier. About that time television sets were slowly finding themselves in American homes to fill the vacuum of this new found free time that people had on their hands.

We have found as a family that since moving into a bigger house, the "stuff" tends to expand and fill the new space. That is, no matter the size of the house, what you own will fill out the space, and if aren't diligent you'll end up buying or accumulating things because "why not?" There are some days when I do miss our little 1,100 square foot row house; it just seemed easier to stay on top of.

Now don't get me wrong, having some free time to ourselves is nice. But it works kind of like the house example above--the more leisure time we have, the more we try to 'fill it' with stuff for the sake of having something to do, and in doing so, we risk a self-centric forgetfulness of our eternal trajectory if indulged in too much. A PhD in "Leisure Studies" would be laughable fifty years ago, but today it's par for the course. Industries spawn in response (think R.E.I, Easter Mountain Sports, etc)--spend your weekend kayaking, boating, snow shoeing, etc. And of course, that requires gear, which requires you to spend money, which keeps these places in business.

Now, I'm all about "work smart not hard," but there's really something to be said about hard work and not "conveniencing"
every last thing. When I have too much leisure time on my hands--time spent indulging my senses with food and drink, entertainment, distraction, and relaxation, (like on vacation)--I tend to get a little hung-over, sensory-speaking. It's nice for a day or two, but more than that and I start to get disgusted with myself. When I spend a day working outside chopping wood or mowing the lawn, or serving in a volunteer capacity, on the other hand, I come home feeling tired and with a sense of accomplishment. When we are constantly serving the self, when we have everything we could possibly want at our disposal, when we have more free time than we know what to do with--I think it's kind of a breeding ground for unhappiness. For myself, the times I am most unhappy are those times when it's just about me.

In the Gospel of Luke Jesus tells a parable about a "rich fool" living the life of leisure:

"The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'what shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.'
Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; east, drink, and be merry.'
But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'
This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich towards God." (Lk 12: 18-21)

Concerned only with himself and eating, drinking and being merry, he is caught off guard when the day of reckoning comes, soft from all that leisure time.

Men do best when we have purpose or a task to complete, when we get out of ourselves, and have the opportunity to work hard. That's why you see the seeds of discontent and radicalism being sown in areas where high percentages of men are unemployed, sitting around all day, with no opportunity for meaningful work.

Men and young men have real potential to great things when pushed, but our current culture of leisure works against this. My dad had a saying growing up--"too much of anything is no good." It's not good to work eighty hours a week and never rest. It's also not good to lay around the house all day not working and just satisfying the senses. Good to find a balance, but err on the side of hard work, because it is good for our spirit. "A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest--and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man." (Prov 6:10-11)