Clock off. Shove the papers in your briefcase; it’s quittin’ time. Time to head home. And then what?

It seems to me that even among Christians committed to living a life not entirely subject to their phones, and who appreciate good books, art, and music, there is often a lethargy in actively seeking out leisure and an unwillingness to notice it can require effort. 

Weekends are not bookends—lifeless decorations that keep the important stuff from falling off the shelf. Weekends, and any time off, certainly have multiple functions. But in our day and age, it seems that two approaches to “time off” have become dominant: the time-wasting paradigm, and the workaholic paradigm. 

In the first instance, one gets off work and proceeds to digitally putter: reels, texts, shorts, followed by TV series, movies, and video games. Household tasks are given little time and attention; cooking is kept to a minimum, as is effort put into cleaning, decoration, and maintenance. Similarly, the needs of the body for exercise and fresh air tend to be neglected, while the soul languishes for want of thought, time for contemplation, good books, and vigorous conversations. 

In the second or “workaholic” situation, the opposite is true externally, but conditions may be similar interiorly. Instead of plopping onto the couch, the workaholic shoves “improving” or “worthwhile” activities into every corner of his or her free time. Having clocked off work, the weekend becomes a race through (check all that apply) prepping ambitious meals, extensive cleaning, visiting museums and libraries, going to the gym, getting in your run or bike ride, tightly scheduled coffee dates with friends, and making sure you don’t arrive late to the pizza party. Even contemplative activities become “work,” an item to be “gotten done” and checked off the list. The exhausted body is forced to keep going by the will, while the soul and mind suffer from oxygen deprivation, never having time to catch their breath.

In the first instance, creativity and worthwhile endeavors are choked by a false rest or excess of passive activity; in the second, creativity and worthwhile endeavors are smothered by a lack of any rest or willingness to savor them for fear that that might lead to some lack. Fear of missing out seems to be apparent in the overachiever where the slothful scroller has perhaps despaired (or never tried) to achieve much of anything. 

“Not wasting one’s time” is a laudable goal and does not necessarily necessitate frenetic action. Yet the case for a different kind of “wasting time” exists, just as it was appropriate for Mary Magdalene to “waste” the precious ointment. If the “waste” of time that prayer involves is more evidently worthwhile, allowing for fallow time in general is also important. Just as a farmer must sometimes let fields lie unplanted in order, ultimately, to make them more fertile, so time must sometimes be left to lie fallow. This is the leisure paradigm.

Essentially, the question comes down to: What is your life for? I don’t like to think there is an easy formulation for that (although the Baltimore Catechism did a good job when it said, “to know, love and serve God in this life so as to be happy with him in the next”). But I’d be suspicious of an answer that did not, in some way, include the following: life is for living, and this living (in the sense of “human flourishing”) is brought about through the cultivation of our bodily and spiritual faculties in prayer, study, sport, socializing, and engagement with beautiful realities around us. Part of “serving and loving God” in this life is actually living a very full human life—otherwise there is little to divinize. Essentially, the question comes down to: What is your life for?Tweet This

In previous ages, all of these aspects were present in life, and life itself did not have the sharp divide between “work life” and the opposite—be it “time off,” “family life,” “free time,” and so forth, that it now has. Working in the fields or in a workshop combined physical activity with socializing and engagement with nature: and this flowed naturally and directly into the home where the goods you made were used—or, at the very least, the local community whence you in turn received sustenance. Often enough, other members of the family, immediate or extended, were involved in both the work and the leisure, and so social interaction didn’t need so many of its own artificially separated “times.”

Think of a small farmer: the eggs and vegetables he spends his days procuring from chickens and fields go where? To his family first of all, and secondly to support the local community. His neighbor the cobbler (who isn’t a farmer) sells him shoes and gets food in return—and thus the support of his family is almost as direct.

But that is not the situation 99% of us are in. There is a fundamental problem in the relation of work and life in our age. Few jobs in modern America have the feel of “real life”: with the proliferation of jobs centered around computer-based information manipulation, many human needs of a life well lived that ought to be met in work must be addressed outside of office hours and be balanced with “family life.”

The position we face, then, is that much that is required for human flourishing must be “made up” outside of work time: and that requires effort. Already divorced from a knowledge of these good things, we have to do triple the work of “regular work”: finding these activities, learning how to flourish in them, and then actually doing them!

Leisure, unlike the bad sort of time wasting, involves the pursuit of things good in and of themselves. Full stop. They lead to rest, peace, and the savoring of unbuyable moments of life. The converse leads to dissipation which tends to separate us from our loved ones and create a sense of sticky and tired dissatisfaction with life.

Most people require an object of their attention, even when being restful and contemplative. Indeed, the better the object, the more it is possible to rest in it and contemplate it with joy. The point is not that we necessarily need to do less but, rather, that we need to find the right activities and objects that will renew us in contact with reality: humans, animals, stones, sunshine, live music.

I have written elsewhere of Hilaire Belloc’s conception of fundamentally human pastimes, and of fishing, walking, and other ways of getting real. It’s not hard to guess what I advocate: get off your phone, get into nature, listen to Renaissance music, read good books, and actually give yourself the space and flexibility to pause in your solitude to be “alone with the Alone.” At other times, make clear and generous time to simply be together with those you love; let whatever activity brought you together in the first place fade away as you simply exist fruitfully in companionship. You don’t need to justify lying in the grass and staring at the clouds. Or kissing your wife. Or hugging your children. Or jumping in an icy mountain lake.

We would do well to examine ourselves: Are we willing to put work into leisure? Are the slothful among us ready to recognize that rest has a larger meaning than “not doing anything,” or letting ourselves be passively entertained by whatever random items flow along the digital highway? And as for the overachievers, are we open to giving ourselves space for contemplation, just simply sitting in the sun, thoughtful reflection, and the true “time wasting” which is not a waste at all?

Next time quittin’ time rolls around, I wonder what being “off” work will mean for you.

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