Staking our claim: why leisure is still significant in these troubling times

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, it is appropriate for park and recreation professionals to ask, "What is our role in this troubled world?" The attacks on the World Trade Center and on western civilization and modernity themselves resulted not only in the destruction of lives and buildings, they fundamentally changed the perception many of us have of the world and our place in it. Prior to the attacks, many park and recreation professionals felt sure of our role and meaning; we provided a context for experiencing leisure. In our new world, we are left to ask, "So what?" Many of us wonder if there could be any real meaning in the work we do in the wake of a terror that ripped apart the security we once felt.

This is a time for more soul-searching and redefinition as our world changes drastically. Leisure is a big and powerful thing, and we as recreation professionals are among its most important proponents. There is meaning in what we do, and it is no more or less significant now than it was prior to September 11. That meaning lies in leisure's power to transform, to create and to do good.

Converging Paths

The horrors of World War II, and more specifically, the horrors of the Holocaust, might seem unlikely points of departure for this conversation, but these catastrophic events, juxtaposed against the events of September 11, provide a parallel context for considering leisure's significance. Moreover, this period in the middle of the 20th century profoundly affected the lives of two individuals who offer important insight into the meaning of leisure in today's world--Viktor Frankl and Joseph Pieper.

Frankl was a prisoner at Auschwitz during the second world war. He lost his parents, siblings and with to the Holocaust, yet despite all be endured, he emerged from the experience with a remarkable philosophy of life. While witnessing more things terrible than good, Frankl managed to learn from the positive experiences. "We who lived in the concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: The last of his freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Frankl's personal philosophy evolved into a type of psychoanalysis he called Logotherapy. At the start of a session with a new client, Frankl often asked, "Why haven't you killed yourself yet?" At first blush, it hardly seems to be a therapeutic question. However, Frankl's intent was not to provoke suicide. On the contrary, his intent was to help clients find the meaning in their lives. We might ask ourselves the same question. Why am I here? Most of us are beaten up by the world a little bit every day. There must be something or someone to keep us going.

Frankl invoked the Nietzschian idea that having a 'why' to live for enables a person to deal with just about any 'how.' "In Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive." Thus, having a meaning, a why as it were, inoculates us against the worst the world can throw our way. Yet Frankl did not stop with merely holding the line against the world. Meaning, he explained, leads to happiness and success. Devoting ourselves to something meaningful not only wards off the negative but carries positive effects as well. Not just any task will do, only those special tasks we ultimately relish.

According to Frankl, there are three main avenues to meaning. First, one can create a work or do a deed that one finds meaningful. Second, one can love something or someone. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Frankl described how a victim of a hopeless situation may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and ultimately change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph. Thus, one finds meaning through transformation. How does one accomplish this? What is the mechanism for such transformation? Joseph Pieper wasn't shy about the answer--transformation occurs through leisure.

In Pieper's view, work was inexorably and quickly taking over the world, leaving no room for anything else. The new society being built was adrift from its traditional leisure-related moorings, and he lashed out against the lack of culture in what he branded "The World of Work." In this world, we would all become proletarians. Essentially, a proletarian is like a cog in a machine, with the single purpose of keeping the machine operating.

Leisure might exist in some diminished way, but it wouldn't be a leisure recognized by Pieper. Its use would be functional, so that he or she might better tolerate the existence of a cog. It can be fairly argued that many people live their lives as cogs, working until they can work no more.

If you've had a job you hated, you know what Pieper was talking about. You probably experienced it as a feeling, that awful feeling that creeps into your body early Sunday afternoon. Its accompanied by the awful thought that in mere hours the weekend will be over and you'll have to go back to that awful place to do that awful thing you do with those awful people. Yet, many among us are driven by such work. It is ingrained in us to believe that hard work is an inherently good thing. It makes no sense except to the truly masochistic that people must spend their lives working hard just for the sake of hard work. As Pieper explained, such work represents a person's refusal to be what he or she was meant to be, a refusal to embrace the true self. There may be near constant strain, yet it amounts to the same as idleness, and it is contrary to the nature of humans.

As humans, we could survive in the crudest hut or cave, with minimal clothing, food and water. Yet we don't settle for that. Instead, we build cathedrals, temples, skyscrapers and whole swaths of suburban "McMansions." We invent cuisine. Fashion changes with the seasons, as regular as the rotation of the planet, and form has infringed on function to such a degree that we don't think twice of the vestigial necktie or the hazardous high heel.

Anthropologists can argue about the meaning of such cultural artifacts, but the essential difference between cave and cathedral, gruel and gastronomy, leopard loin cloth and, well, leopard g-string, is our obsession with leisure. The driving force between subsistence and the adorned lives we lead is leisure. Yet leisure offers more than adornment.

Think about a moment of pure leisure. You might have fallen into it when you were playing a sport, singing a song or climbing a mountain. Whatever it was, in that moment you were perfectly you. These moments are too rare, and Pieper described them as a celebration, a tribute and a moment of 'wholeness.'

   "Wholeness is what man strives for; the
   power to achieve leisure is one of the
   fundamental powers of the human soul.
   Like the gift for contemplative absorption
   in the things that are, and like the
   capacity of the spirit to soar in festive
   celebration, the power to know leisure is
   the power to overstep the boundaries of
   the workaday world and reach out to the
   superhuman, life-giving existential
   forces that refresh and renew us before
   we turn back to our daily work. Only in
   genuine leisure does a 'gate to freedom'
   open. Through that gate man may escape
   from the 'restricted area' of that 'latent
   anxiety,' which a keen observer has perceived
   to be the mark of the world of
   work; where 'work and unemployment
   are the inescapable poles of existence.'"

People may not realize it, but when we strive for the sweetness of the perfect golf swing, when we're literally overcome by that perfect vista at the end of a hike, when we savor the taste of the mot juste in a conversation, at that moment, we are at leisure most pure.

Unfortunately, we usually experience leisure only momentarily, and for many, the rest of life is merely waiting around for the next opportunity. What do we have to offer as a profession? At the very least we have leisure, a moment of wholeness and a taste of the divine.

Transformation or Leaving the "World of Work"

Frankl's prescription for finding meaning in life and Pieper's prescription for leisure are essentially the same. The connection is in surrendering to meaning. To have true leisure, we freely squander our time, our efforts and ultimately ourselves to the divine purpose embedded within us all. When we are at leisure, we are our perfect selves, or at least as close to being our perfect selves as we can be. Likewise, when we surrender to an-other person or another cause, we find meaning. We are then at leisure because finding meaning is the same thing as finding ourselves, finding the purpose for our existence. We find meaning, and success and happiness ensue. The work-a-day world disappears.

Ultimately, Pieper offers salvation from the spiritual and actual poverty of the world of work. To dwell in leisure, people must direct their energies toward fulfilling their divine purposes, to do whatever those things are that they were put here to do. Why bother? Because in this troubled world, leisure is a good and powerful thing.

Richard Williams, Ed.D., is a professor at East Carolina University; Daniel Dustin, Ph.D., and Alexis McKenney, Ed.D., are professors at Florida International University.

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