Note: This week is a sabbatical week for me. I take every seventh off to focusing on rest and prepare for the next six weeks. You can learn more about sabbaticals here, and read my sabbatical dispatches here.
Today we’re looking at three quotes I’ve been pondering lately. They all deal with leisure time and making room for the most important things every day.
It might seem odd to speak about idleness as so many of us have little choice but to stay home for the next few months, at least. Being at home doesn’t guarantee rest or idleness, though, and can give the impression that we don’t need rest since we aren’t going about our usual routines. This makes it even more important to schedule some time to be idle. It is incredibly important that we give our minds time and space to unwind, as well as our bodies.
Here is Soren Kierkegaard, in Either/Or, on idleness:
“Idleness as such is by no means a root of evil; on the contrary, it is a truly divine life, if one is not bored… Idleness, then, is so far from being the root of evil that it is rather the true good. Boredom is the root of evil; it is that which must be held off. Idleness is not the evil; indeed, it may be said that everyone who lacks a sense for it thereby shows that he has not raised himself to the human level.”
“There is an indefatigable activity that shuts a person out of the world of spirit and places him in a class with the animals, which instinctively must always be in motion. There are people who have an extraordinary talent for transforming everything into a business operation, whose whole life is a business operation, who fall in love and are married, hear a joke, and admire a work of art with the same businesslike zeal with which they work at the office. The Latin proverb otium est pulvinar diaboli [idleness is the devil’s pillow] is quite correct, but the devil does not find time to lay his head on this pillow if one is not bored. But since people believe that it is man’s destiny to work, the antithesis idleness/work is correct. I assume that it is man’s destiny to amuse himself, and therefore my antithesis is no less correct.”
“Here at once is the principle of limitation, the sole saving principle in the world. The more a person limits himself, the more resourceful he becomes.”
Idleness is the anticipation of action. It is not anxiety, nor is it simply the absence of movement.
To be idle is to be still in your mind. You might be jogging or walking or doodling or making photographs, but you’re at ease, at rest while moving. It is one’s ability to sit quietly with your thoughts and be. It’s the peace and tranquility involved in noticing. Noticing what, you might ask. Whatever is around you; the brooch on the woman shopping’s lapel, the scent of jasmine on the air as you amble down the sidewalk, the leaves changing on trees. Noticing your surroundings. Listening to the sounds around you – birds, tires on the pavement, whatever it may be. Notice.
It’s also crucial we understand Kierkegaard’s conception of boredom. He isn’t referring to an absence of activity, but to an absence of meaning. A lack of meaning or intention in our lives, then, is “the root of evil.”
This conception of boredom is the opposite of idleness, and the opposite of what we aim to achieve in leisure, as well. Idleness and leisure both exist to enrich life and bring fulfillment.
To be idle is to reflect, to make time to think. This misunderstood, yet vital part of the human life, is often ignored in modern times. How shocking then, to see Kierkegaard here regarding idleness as a qualification of being human! We aim to do more and produce more, but we don’t take the time to reflect on our reasons for doing so, or question why we’re aiming for “more” in the first place.
The solution is setting aside time to reflect on your priorities and what you’d like to accomplish over the next few weeks. This is the perfect time to think about what you’d like your days to look like.
Learning is not an accident, but a duty – an ongoing enterprise of bettering oneself.
“Learning is not attained by chance, it must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.”
― Abigail Adams
Learning is a verb. I’ve been ruminating over this quote because Adams hits on a critical aspect of learning – it doesn’t just happen by osmosis. You must put forth the effort if you desire to gain anything from the experience. This is especially true as we get older and leave formal education. It is easy to stop learning, to stop pushing yourself to know more about your interests and to keep up with the latest developments in your field. However, what is the alternative? To slowly fade away and realize you have no idea what is going on and nothing to contribute to the current conversation.
I don’t think it’s quite accurate to say we always get out of education the effort we put into it. However, that effort and your knowledge does compound. So, the effort you put in up front means you can always draw on that information later and can work less to maintain that information. The more you learn now about Emerson, for example, the more connections you can make later to his work and the deeper you can go with your references and understanding of his same works. The same is true of physics or biology or economics, or any other ongoing area of study. Your understanding deepens, making you a better writer, reader, student, which translates into a more informed and responsible citizen.
Winston Churchill made sure to make every day count.
“Every night, I try myself by Court Martial to see if I have done anything effective during the day. I don’t mean just pawing the ground, anyone can go through the motions, but something really effective.”
While Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, all that is truly necessary to live deliberately is the decision and mindset to do so. This idea of reviewing each day to see one’s progress is an excellent place to begin, and has been practiced by all sorts of notable individuals across time. More than two thousand years ago, Seneca describes describes his practice of reviewing the following questions each day: “What bad habit did I curb today? How am I better? Were my actions just? How can I improve?”
Anne Frank wrote beautifully about this concept in her diary, offering the daily review of one’s actions as a beautiful way to improve cultures and the world, one person at a time. “How noble and good everyone could be if, at the end of each day, they were to review their own behavior and weigh up the rights and wrongs.” As optimistic as this may sound, it is certainly true; cultures are built and destroyed one person at a time. How we each individually treat those around us, the attitudes which rule your daily goings and outings, how I speak to those I know I’ll never see again – these small actions matter. Bring enough of them together and you create a culture. Establish that culture, and you have societal norms. Once norms are established, they take generations to change. Truly, each of our lives affect hundreds, if not thousands of others. We owe it to ourselves to make sure we are bringing purpose to each day. What habits do you have – especially those which affect or impact another person – which would be better forgotten?
What have you done today to grow your mind? What have you done to grow spiritually? What gratitude have you expressed? How have you served another person? How have you embraced idleness and taken time to rest your mind? How were your actions today compared to yesterday? What would you like to change? What would you like to keep the same? It’s when we make the time and effort to ask ourselves the difficult questions that improvement and change begin to happen.
