Since 1894, Americans have enjoyed some labor activist’s bright idea to give us a holiday just for working the rest of the year.
Created at the end of the Industrial Revolution to honor the American worker, Labor Day is now synonymous with sales, end-of-summer parties, and the last day of the year where you can wear white (well, not anymore).
At the time when Labor Day was created, the American worker couldn’t dream of the quantity of leisure we enjoy now. Of Americans 15 years old or older, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, the average day holds almost five and a half hours of leisure time.
This sounds like great news, but in 1970, W.H. Auden wasn’t so sure. “It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy,” the poet wrote. “When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.”
As much as it seems that Auden just didn’t know how to enjoy a day off, he has a point. As a culture, we’ve forgotten the purpose of leisure. In his book Leisure: The Basis of Culture, 20th-century philosopher Josef Pieper differentiates leisure from its lazy cousin, idleness.
“Idleness, in the old sense of the word, so far from being synonymous with leisure, is more nearly the inner prerequisite which renders leisure impossible: it might be described as the utter absence of leisure, or the very opposite of leisure,” he wrote.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spend much of their leisure time glued to the television: “Watching TV was the leisure activity that occupied the most time (2.8 hours per day), accounting for just over half of all leisure time, on average.”
While a good TV show is no waste of time, there must be more to leisure that we’re missing out on. Pieper explains, “Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude — it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time.”
Leisure, instead, is a frame of mind. Pieper writes, “Leisure is a form of silence.”
Distinct from mere idleness, leisure requires intentional contemplation, whether that takes the form of prayer or meditation or other forms of thoughtful reflection. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, “He enjoys true leisure who has time to improve his soul’s estate.”
If you want to enjoy leisure, then, consider taking time away from the television or the computer. Enjoy silence in a way few of us do anymore, and remember the words of Oscar Wilde: “Cultivated leisure is the aim of man.”
