The ever-tightening connection between our work and our personal identity constricts even more. We come to believe that being idle at all is, somehow, the antithesis of freedom. But we would do well to think about idleness more, and rather differently from how we do.
Leisure today is, for many people, a glimpse at what it would be like to do nothing for more than a few hours. It is — or at least it used to be — downtime, lazing away, forgetting the bothers of the workplace. We use our allowance of paid vacation to recharge the batteries, address some level of emotional well-being… and gear up for a return to work. Leisure, in this way, is incorporated into the world of work. It is not a subversion of it.
The potential in idleness for greater freedom seems worth the exploration. Or at least an attempt to think about what prevents us from truly doing nothing right now.
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