What is leisure?
Leisure is that portion of time not obligated by subsistence or existence demands. It represents discretionary or free time, time in which one may make voluntary choices of experience.
Leisure is usually regarded as a synonym for frivolity. The things you do when you have nothing useful to do are called leisure activities. To do something slowly, ploddingly or inefficiently is described as doing it in a leisurely manner.
Yet the old definition of leisure (from the Oxford English Dictionary), "the freedom or opportunity to do something specified or implied," should alert us that leisure is extraordinarily important. "Something specified or implied" can be any action whatever. This degree of generality tells us that leisure is a fundamental of action.
That was Aristotle's view. Aristotle, who was certainly not given to rash and thoughtless hyperbole, repeatedly emphasized the importance of leisure (schole). "As I must repeat once again, the first principle of all action is leisure." (Pol., Bk VII, 3) Indeed, "we are busy that we may have leisure." (Nich. Eth. Bk X, 7.) According to Aristotle, leisure is the goal of busy-ness, of what we call labor. Aristotle is the first, and so far the only philosopher, to have held the doctrine that I call scholism: the view that leisure is a fundamental human value. He did not, however, give a formal account of its nature.
The common definition of leisure as "time off work" or "time for play" points out an important aspect of leisure: time. It specifies the nature of the freedom or opportunity which is involved in leisure: leisure is time available for action. Unfortunately, to define leisure as time off work is like defining money as a commodity which can be exchanged for useless luxuries. Such a definition of money would blind us to the practical uses of money, and the common definition of leisure blinds us to the profoundly practical uses of leisure.
To grasp the full significance of leisure, we must recognize it as time available for any action whatever. When you set aside an hour, day or decade for a particular project, you are devoting an hour, day or decade of your leisure to that project. Whether your project is utterly frivolous or profoundly serious, you require leisure for it. Leisure is a basic resource which is necessary for, and which is used up in, the performance of any action whatever, and therefore in pursuit or enjoyment of any value whatever.
So, what is leisure? To devote your leisure to some action means to devote your mental and physical powers to that action for that period of time. It means to devote your life to that action for that period of time. A minute or hour of your leisure is a minute or hour of your life. Your leisure is your life. Formally, leisure is an individual human life as measured by time. Informally, leisure is the time of your life.
Leisure is a value because life is a value. Leisure is just life regarded as a series of measured portions.
What is Leisure Sickness?
If on weekends, you have trouble sleeping, feel nauseous, exhausted, get cold or flu symptoms or headaches, and particularly if you get ill on vacations, you may be suffering from leisure sickness. In the late 20th century, Ad Vingerhoets and Maaike van Huijgevoort, psychologists at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, first studied the syndrome of leisure sickness. Essentially, Vingerhoets and van Huijgevoort found that many people seem to get ill on weekends and vacations, not from viral based diseases, but from the fact that they are not working.
In addition to the symptoms mentioned above, leisure sickness is associated with aches and pains and an overall feeling of fatigue. Those who suffer from the condition may also have lousy vacations, because they frequently feel ill or lack the energy to enjoy the activities they planned to do. Leisure sickness is considered psychosomatic, because most people in the midst of it are not suffering from any viral or bacterial illness.
In the early studies done by these psychologists, it appeared that certain personality types are most likely to encounter leisure sickness. People who typically are overworked, expressed a lot of stress around working, or who rarely took time off from work were often leisure sickness victims. Others who tended to be affected by leisure sickness were those for whom planning vacations was viewed as especially stressful. In contrast, those people who did not report leisure sickness were likely to exhibit healthy attitudes toward work, had a balanced work and social life, and enjoyed vacation planning, not viewing it as stressful.
For some people, the sudden transition from job orientation to leisure orientation brought on symptoms of leisure sickness. It is as though people really did not know what to do with themselves, even when they had plans, because their central focus was generally on working. This manifested in the body as symptoms of stress, which in turn manifested symptoms of illness.
When people took long vacations, many reported feeling better from leisure sickness symptoms after about a week. Still some reported always being sick on vacations, no matter the length. In the first scenario, it appears that some people are able to shift their focus into a leisure instead of working mode and recover from leisure sickness after being off the job for a while.
It does appear that addressing attitudes toward work can help leisure sickness. Many who reported leisure sickness also reported thinking about work much of the time when they were not working. Some people also noted that they felt guilty for not working in their off time. It’s fairly easy to draw lines between preoccupation with work, stress, and illness.
The suggestion, however, is that curing leisure sickness means changing attitudes about work. This might mean allowing yourself to feel entitled to vacations, and during your workweek, still participating in social activities so that there is a better balance between work and relaxation. From a stress standpoint, many people are able to feel less stress when they deliberately focus on the present, not allowing their jobs to “come home with them.” This can’t always be mastered, but if every vacation represents another bout of leisure sickness, it might well be worth investigating how to change your attitude toward work.
QUOTES: Leisure
"If, then, it seems to you that our investigation is in a satisfactory condition, there must remain for all of you the task of extending us your pardon for the shortcomings of the inquiry, and for the discoveries thereof your warm thanks."
-Aristotle, On Sophistical Refutations
"Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions."
- Mark Twain
"Few Americans even know what 'leisure' really means, and commonly confuse it with recreation or time off from work, even if that time is spent doing chores."
- Shannon Mullen, "Millenium Changes Definition of Leisure", USA Today (5/27/99)
"The individual, in our society, works for profit; but the social purpose of his work lies in the consumption of what he produces. It is this divorce between the individual and the social purpose of production that makes it so difficult for men to think clearly in a world in which profit-making is the incentive to industry."
- Bertrand Russell
"In a society that enforces a schizoid split between Work and Leisure, we have all experienced the trivialization of our "free time", time which is organized neither as work nor as leisure."
- Hakim Bey
"[Play] comes to be viewed by its participants as pleasurable but inessential, except as an interstice between sleep and productive labor. [But] the substance of human liberation may be realized in the play element...play represents the flowering of the imagination unfettered by the constraints of material necessity."
- Stanley Aronowitz, False Promises
"The creative and rewarding use of leisure should be at least as central a concern as the need for meaningful work."
- Paul Wachtel, The Poverty of Affluence
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