We feel guilty about doing things that do not give immediate results. We can get overly focused on building our career. We can get absorbed in studies. We begin to measure our days by what we accomplished. Leisure seems like a foreign concept. We need to understand this. Leisure is not the opposite of a meaningful life. Rather, it is one of the ways we recover the freedom to receive the meaning of life as a gift. To understand leisure, it can be good to think about activities whose value cannot be reduced to immediate utility, like space exploration.
Why Go to the Moon?
Why go to the Moon? On September 12, 1962, President John F. Kennedy stood before a crowd at Rice University Stadium in Houston, Texas. JFK framed space exploration as the newest frontier of American achievement. For many people today, the question naturally arises: “Why go to the Moon?” Beyond the many technological advances that have accompanied the Space Program, it is also good to acknowledge that there are some things we do for their own sake. Practical utility does not ultimately determine the value of every action.
The question “Why go to the Moon?” is really a question about utility. Even an endeavor with practical purposes cannot be adequately understood in terms of utility alone. We often fall into the trap of thinking that we always need to accomplish or produce something. If there is no practical purpose, is our endeavor worthwhile? These are valid questions, but they become oppressive when we apply them to everything.
We all need time for play. We need to engage in activities for their own sake. This might be a hike, a pleasant meal with friends, or curling up with a good book. In all these cases, we are engaging in leisure. The mind needs time away from the demands of work. We need to engage in leisure, but we might find various obstacles to it in our present times.
Busyness as an Obstacle to Leisure
Busyness wears us out. We seem to be flitting from one activity to another, like a honeybee visiting flowers in the spring. The activities may be good things in themselves, but they suck the life out of us when they exceed our strength and endurance.
Leisure is not merely doing something fun instead of working. It is an intentional activity that leads to rest, truly re-creating our souls. Leisure allows us to engage reality without immediately looking for some practical outcome.
St. Thomas Aquinas recognized the soul’s need for recreation. He talks about appropriate playfulness and pleasant recreation. We are not machines designed only to work. We need activities that restore us. Josef Pieper argues that leisure is fundamentally receptive. It prepares us to engage reality, truth, beauty, and ultimately God.
Leisure does have practical benefits. It can restore mental clarity, relieve tension, and help us get back to our work with greater perspective. But these benefits are secondary. If we rest only so that we can work harder, then even our rest has become another form of work.
What Do We Mean by Leisure?
It can be hard to distinguish leisure from play, relaxation, and entertainment. What’s the difference? Entertainment is something we consume for amusement. Relaxation is a release from tension. Recreation is an activity that restores us. Play is an activity undertaken freely for its own sake. Leisure is a deeper disposition of freedom and receptivity toward reality. Leisure is not “doing nothing.” Rather, it is engaging reality without demanding a productive return from it.
Leisure also helps us to recognize our own worth. We are not merely cogs in a machine. Our value is not determined merely by our output. We should learn to play at the various stages of our life. I would caution against getting too comfortable with digital forms of entertainment as a form of leisure. Some entertainment looks like leisure but leaves us less receptive.
A person can spend hours watching Netflix, playing Mario Cart, or scrolling Instagram. The person is not working, but is not necessarily experiencing leisure. It is going to be better to look for other things that actually refresh us. So much entertainment can be exhausting. We want leisure that actually refreshes us. We want to find activities that re-create us rather than merely fill up our time.
Learning to Do Less
Pope Leo XIV met with the priests of Rome and talked to them about evaluating their pastoral work. One of his exhortations was to do less. The mandate might seem counterintuitive. Normally, the boss is asking for more productivity. He is not asking people to become less productive. He is asking them to become more focused.
Modern society pushes us to consume, achieve, and accumulate. Leisure requires freedom from compulsion. Not everything good has to become our responsibility. We want to live the virtue of Christian detachment. This does not mean that we don’t care about what is going on around us. Rather, we are deeply invested and want to go deeper, but in a way that we do not risk losing our humanity. Our identity does not depend on possessing, accomplishing, or controlling everything around us.
Hearing the Shepherd’s Voice
For the Christian, leisure ultimately brings us back to Christ. I love the image of Jesus as a shepherd. In John 10:27, Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd and affirms that “my sheep hear my voice.” Prayer is one of the deepest forms of receptivity. We stop trying to control and allow God’s presence to invade our soul. Because of this, prayer can be deeply restorative; it re-creates us.
Leisure disposes us to listen. As we grow in our relationship with God, we become more discerning of the proper action we should take in life. It helps us listen to Pope Leo about how to discern our approach to work and responsibility. Pope Leo connects this balance between work, leisure, and rest to the health of families and society.
Labor policies need to promote continuity and the quality of employment, countering insecurity as a normal condition of life and encouraging realistic paths for entry into the workforce and for professional growth. Measures are needed to ensure a healthy way of living, for without a proper balance between work, leisure and rest, families are weakened and young people struggle to develop a sense of responsibility (Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 169).
Families and individuals are going to be stronger to the measure that they are able to recover from work and duty and engage in leisurely activities. When Aristotle spoke about philosophy, he noted that “wonder is the beginning of knowledge.” Leisure is one way that we are able to recover a sense of wonder. We live in a world inundated by noise and confusion. Leisure, quiet, calm, prayer, and reflection allow us to achieve balance and restore order to our worlds.
We are not merely producers; we are creatures. We receive our lives before we begin to shape them. We receive the world, other people, and ultimately God’s grace as gifts. Pieper referred to leisure principally as receptivity. Leisure teaches us to be creatures, to receive who we are from God.
How do you experience leisure?