Leisure Is the Meaning of Work

I don’t often agree with the English philosopher Roger Scruton. His views are too right wing for my taste. But I found myself nodding in vigorous agreement at this passage in his introduction to Leisure The Basis Of Culture by Josef Pieper:

We mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity. Of course, work may be creative. But only when informed by leisure. Work is the means of life; leisure the end. Without the end, work is meaningless—a means to a means to a means . . . and so on forever, like Wall Street or Capitol Hill. Leisure is not the cessation of work, but work of another kind, work restored to its human meaning, as a celebration and a festival.

We work to reach somewhere, to achieve something. If that somewhere and something is merely more work, we find ourselves stuck in a cycle without end. Work ends only in more work, for ever. That renders any work meaningless, just as eating purely for the sake of eating makes a nonsense of sitting down for a meal (and is the cause of most of the obesity in the developed world).

In many organizations, the reward for achievements at work is to be given more and harder work. You may call it promotion or advancement if you wish, but that is what it is: the reward for working hard is to be called upon to work harder. It comes, usually, with more money attached, but money is of little use if you have no leisure to enjoy spending it. Of course, your family may greatly enjoy spending your money, and have ample leisure to do so, courtesy of the effort you put in at work. I leave it to you to decide whether seeing them enjoying life while you labor is sufficient reward in itself.

When you think about it, even those who work selflessly to ensure their children have the finest education and the best chances in life are sometimes guilty of bringing about “work for ever and ever. Amen.” What future opportunities are they seeking to ensure for their children? Usually, they are working and hoping for a situation where each child gets a “good job;” which, of course, means condemning that child to working on and on throughout a lifetime to provide the same for his or her children . . . and so on, for ever and ever.

The meaning and end of work should not be more work. It should be some goal that transcends the means used to achieve it. Leisure, properly understood, is the freedom to enjoy life and the results of your labor: time not just to relax but to engage in all those humanizing and civilizing activities that make life work living. Without leisure, there can be no learning beyond the basic skills needed to work. No enjoyment of art, music, conversation, friendship, or love. None of the higher aspects of human life.

The restlessness of today’s work-for-working’s-sake culture has more to do with an inability to relax into the leisure we need to be fully human than any innate desire to get more money and possessions. We strive and strive because we cannot accept reality and our place within it. Instead, we toil to impose our will on the universe, to bend it to obey our wishes and demands. Of course, since we must inevitably fail in such an arrogant endeavor, all we get for our efforts is the opportunity to waste still more time and energy on trying to achieve the impossible . . . over and over again.

Leisure is the goal for which work is the means, not some unfortunate interruption in the tasks before us. Many people fail to take all their allotted vacation time, probably out of fear that “out of sight means out of mind,” and they will miss out on something while they are away. What will they miss? Mostly likely the chance to work still more. Time for leisure is the only true reward of work. Like everything else available to us, we may use that leisure well or poorly, to celebrate our humanity or reduce ourselves to brain-dead couch potatoes. Yet even the most limited use of leisure does not destroy its importance. It’s what life is for, after all.

I will leave the last word to Josef Pieper:

One the other hand, work itself, when deprived of its counterparts genuine festivity and true leisure, becomes inhuman: it may, whether endured silently or “heroically,” become a bare, hopeless, effort, resembl[ing] the labor of Sisyphus, who in fact is the mythical paradigm of the “Worker” chained to his labor without rest, and without inner satisfaction.

Technorati tags: Leisure purpose of work ends and means leadership slow leadership