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Labor, Leisure Idling and Rest We have already considered two kinds of activity by which we can fill our free time -- uncompensated leisuring and play solely for the sake of pleasure. Two more were mentioned earlier in the listing of the six categories of human activity, but I have not discussed them so far. They are idling and rest. I use the participle idling rather than the noun idleness be cause the connotation of the latter is one of emptiness or vacancy, a vacuum that is filled by mere pastimes or time-killing diversions. When, in the past, the owners of factories or their managers resisted the demands of labor for reduced hours of work, they gave as one reason the deleterious or corrupting effects upon the workers of the idleness that would result. It did not occur to them that they themselves had ample free time to dispose of, which they did not regard as an occasion for idleness, but rather as an opportunity to engage in the pursuits of leisure. The Latin word vacatio was the antonym for the Latin word negolio, which means business -- an economically or socially useful employment of one's time. From the Latin word, we get the English word vacation, which many take as signifying an opportunity for idleness. The Latin word like its English translation gives idleness the connotation of emptiness or vacancy when free time is devoid of anything but time-killing or time-wasting pastimes. I mean something other than that by my use of the word idling. I give it a meaning that borrows from the meaning of the same word when applied to an engine that is idling. The engine is turning over, but the gears are not engaged, and so the automobile is not moving. It is not going anywhere. The engine is not serving the purpose for which it was designed and placed in the chassis of the car. I think of human idling as a use of free time in which we are awake, not asleep, and in which we are not engaged in any purposeful line of thought. Our minds are turning over but are not moving in any intended or purposeful direction. All kinds of thoughts are likely to occur to us when we use free time to engage in idling, especially if the idling occurs toward the end of a day in which we have been engaged in work that is either pure leisuring, whether or not compensated, or has some leisure component in it. Those who insist upon being busy all through their waking hours by engaging in some purposeful activity, whether that be some form of play or leisure, deprive themselves of the benefits of idling. Their lives are the poorer for it. The spontaneous creativity of their minds is seriously diminished or may even be totally suppressed. Rest, like idling, is a word that calls for a brief explication. Many individuals use that word as a synonym for slumber. "Take a rest" means for them lying down and going to sleep. When they say "Take a rest from what you are doing," they are recommending that you relax by ceasing work. They have forgotten the meaning of the word rest when in the Bible it said that God, having finished the work of creation in six days, rested on the seventh when He contemplated the created universe. In that context, the word could not possibly have signified either sleep or relaxation. They have also forgotten the meaning of the word when the Sabbath is called a "day of rest" -- a day in which one does not work, nor does one play or leisure. Still further, they may not know what theologians have in mind when they speak of souls in the presence of God as enjoying "heavenly rest." For Orthodox Jews in mediaeval ghettoes, or alive in the world today, the Sabbath or day of rest was a sacred day, devoid of the secular activities that filled the time of other days. It had the same character for the Puritans. Strict observance of the Sabbath prohibited not only work of any kind but also play of any kind. How, then, was the time of the Sabbath occupied -- the time left free from all but biological necessities? The answer is prayer and other forms of religious contemplation. Orthodox Jews, especially in the mediaeval ghettoes, did not need the day of rest to recoup the energies exhausted by six long days of unremitting toil. Sufficient slumber would serve that purpose. The Sabbath served another purpose for them. It expanded their lives beyond confinement to sleep and toil. It took them out of one world into another. It refreshed their spirits, not their bodies. Rest, in the sense of contemplation, is the very opposite of the activities subsumed under all the other categories. All of them have some practical purpose in this life. Rest lifts us above and out of the exigencies of practical involvement of every kind. Is there any rest for those who are not religious -- who do not devote time to prayer and the contemplation of God? There is, if the contemplation of works of art and the beauties of nature has the same effect for them. It has that effect when the enjoyment of beauties contemplated involves a degree of ecstasy, which takes us out of ourselves and lifts us above all the practical entanglements of our daily lives. The Orthodox Jew and the Benedictine monk fill much of their free time with rest. They lead three-part lives, constituted by sleep, work, and rest. The motto of the Benedictine Order is ora et labora (prayer and work). Chattel-slaves in antiquity and in modern times, serfs in the feudal system, and wage-slaves, as Marx called them in the early years of the industrial revolution, led two-part lives -- of sleep and toil -- with little or no play because they had little or no free time. They worked seven days a week and often as much as fourteen hours a day. The feudal serfs and nineteenth-century factory workers led three-part lives only to the extent that some time was allowed on the Sabbath for religious observances.
Revised 18 December 2000 |