of good just by doing nothing except that we've forgotten how!
what I have read of great men throughout history,
I know that the capacity to relax and let go is an
indispensable part of achievement. To an infinite
capacity for work, then, you should also add the
ability to get away from work and to let the
leisure phase of the creative process assert itself.
Sin Six The Search for Novelty
You may think that you're wasting your leisure
time when you're not doing something new, some
thing different. You may, in your leisure moments,
,be bent on the violently different, the exaggerated,
"the macabre, the bizarre, or the unnatural. But
why are you seeking this novelty?
The answer is that you have become jaded. As a
defense, you have developed a stiff upper lip; you
have kept busy and you have allowed yourself, or
perhaps even forced yourself, to become insensi
tive. Only through overstimulation can you come
alive at all.
Or perhaps you misuse leisure time to escape
from life and responsibilities. As long as the tele
vision set, for instance, is going full blast, the
entire family is silent and absorbed. But the mo
ment the show is over, the return to reality comes
hard and the family may begin to fuss and quarrel.
Had they been at work, or at true leisure, they
could have avoided this painful return to reality
because then they never would have lost reality
in the first place.
Sin Seven Leisure is Wicked
You may abuse your leisure hours because of a
puritanical fear that leisure is indeed the last of
the medieval seven deadly sins sloth.
Thinking this, you agree with the words of a
popular hymn that "Satan finds some mischief still
for idle hands to do."
If you feel this way, you fear unearned enjoy
ment For you, all the give and take of life has a
string attached to it. All living and working be
come a means of getting a claim on God, fate,
fortune, or some material end.
The outright gift becomes impossible, and there
can be no gracious giving or receiving because the
old phrase, "By the grace of God," has no mean
ing for you whatsoever.
This reward-and-punishment attitude toward
work and leisure overlooks the important truth
that nothing creative comes by work alone. All the
diligence and skill that we bring to bear will, in
and of themselves, avail us nothing unless we also
add an infinite capacity for relaxation.
In this relaxation, we need beauty and gracious
ness style in all we do, whether it be in setting
a table or in savoring conversation. For, as Ein
stein said, "The enjoyment of impractical pleasures
is necessary for a balanced life."
The National Recreation Association, a nonprofit
organization that tries to help everyone make the
best use of his free time, says the age of leisure
is at our doorstep. It is all so accepted: the 30-hour
work week is around the corner; the 24-hour work
week is around the next corner. You face a future
with time and lots of it on your hands.
It is fortunate that we have such organizations
to help our communities plan more recreation
facilities and programs for us to enjoy if we will.
(Continued)
Family Weekly November 27, I960
PHOTOGRAPHS BY ANN ZANE SHANKS
With more leisure time than ever, too many
Americans forget the best way to enjoy it
is just to stop work, lie back, and relax.
against leisure
By ALEXANDER REID MARTIN, M. D. as told to Flora Rheta Schreiber
Chairman, National Committee on Leisure, American Psychiatric Association