“A time like the present seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of ‘leisure.’”
Just three years after the second world war, German philosopher Josef Pieper opened his essay, Leisure: the Basis of Culture, well-aware that leisure would not seem urgent to most during Germany’s existential post-war reconstruction.
But this painful time of rebuilding, Pieper argued, offered a rare chance for society to incorporate the “whole of its existence”—the joy of spending time with family, producing and consuming art, exercising, communing with nature—instead of just focusing on maximizing economic productivity. To do otherwise, Pieper argued, would result in a turning point which “future historians may mark down….as one of the major cultural crises of modern civilization.”
Right now, as America navigates its own rebuilding and is forced to face its frayed relationship to work head-on, Americans—and the world—seem ready for this counterintuitive message: In order to survive, let alone thrive, the way we take off work must also be part of this reckoning.
It’s time for workplace sabbaticals—for professionals at all levels—to get their due.
My interest in time ...
