麻豆社

Good morning. It鈥檚 mid-August, which means summer holidays, which means some of you may be feeling bored. If so, embrace it.

Our society often makes us feel guilty about having nothing to do: 鈥渢he devil makes work for idle hands鈥� as the saying goes. Well, I like to fill my time with reading and one of the most illuminating books I鈥檝e recently come across is LEISURE: THE BASIS OF CULTURE by the German philosopher Josef Pieper.

Pieper was writing in 1948, when the world was recovering from war and rebuilding as fast as it could. Piper saw a society in which the value of life was measured in hard work. Work supposedly made the individual valuable to society and, by implication, anyone who was idle was lazy and selfish.

But the West didn鈥檛 always think this way, said Pieper. Pieper noted that back in the Middle Ages, idleness was defined not just as 鈥渄oing nothing鈥� but as 鈥渁n inability to relax鈥� 鈥� to do nothing and to feel frustrated by it. The idea of doing 鈥渨ork for work鈥檚 sake鈥� was frowned upon. To Medieval Christians, restless idleness and frenetic activity were signs that a person wasn鈥檛 comfortable with themselves or with what God wanted them to be.

Pieper urged his readers to shrug off the modem world鈥檚 obsession with work and return to the far more self-reflective world of the Middle Ages 鈥� to the age of the monastery. By modern standards, monks or nuns are idle because they鈥檙e not slaving away in an office or a factory 鈥� and yet thinkers and artists dedicating their lives to contemplation, have produced some world-changing art and ideas. Free time is essential to civilisation.

Nowadays, we do get time off work 鈥� sure 鈥� but we鈥檙e told holiday is for 鈥渞echarging the batteries鈥� so that we鈥檙e ready to go back to the office and give 110 per cent. Medieval leisure set different goals for leisure built around deep thought and discovery of the self, and essential to that, said Pieper, was cultivating 鈥渟tillness鈥�. Stillness allows us to observe and experience, all the while accepting that we won鈥檛 be able to grasp everything. Pieper compared this to the 鈥渃onversation of lovers鈥� and I think it's a beautiful metaphor.

There is dialogue between lovers, there is thought. But there is also a unique desire completely to listen to someone else, to comprehend as much of the other person as possible. It鈥檚 when we鈥檙e at leisure that we can pass what Pieper described as 鈥渁 celebratory, approving, lingering gaze of the inner eye on the reality of creation.鈥�

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