The Pleasure and Pain of Leisure

You’re free, and the world is your playground. What do you do?

That’s empowering and scary.

Free time is our opportunity for pleasure and play. We go to the beach, gather with family, or do house chores.

More than that, what we do with our free time speaks volumes about our values. So what are your weekends and vacations for? Trips with family and children talk about their place in our lives. Late nights at restaurants and bars say we like fun and amusement. A vacation abroad tells about our curiosity and exploration. And Netflix binges smile about our love of entertainment and relaxation.

But what if all our time was leisure time?

What if those things we cram into nights and weekends could fill our whole lives? You could watch sports, party, or travel all the time. But, would you do it, and how would it feel?

An odd feeling creeps in: do we want more leisure time? I’ve written about our weekends, and there’s comfort in Monday coming and our life returning to normal. Ask folks returning from a trip to Vegas or Nashville about their gratitude to be home.

Freedom is a blessing and a burden.

Take this scene from The Departed: King-pin Jack Nicholson grills Leonardo DiCaprio about an informant in their crew. Nicholson asks DiCaprio if he could be the leader. DiCaprio says he could, but he doesn’t want to. Nicholson responds, “a heavy lies the crown sort of thing.”

That idiom taken from Shakespeare’s Henry IV means those charged with responsibility carry a burden.

And what greater responsibility is there than to be in charge of our life? The constraints you have place restrictions on what you do. And it’s easier to roll out of bed Monday to Friday and do the work our boss tells us or take care of family than to figure out and face what we’d like to be doing.

The prisoner freed finds themselves faced with directing their own life. In Shawshank Redemption, that’s Brooks committing suicide after being released. He’d rather die than have to make his way in the world.

My point is that free time is powerful.

Yet we do things to kill that time or fill it with our need to feel busy. We pile on so many tasks that we remove our leisure time altogether.

We want more freedom and time of our own. But receiving it is a two-sided coin. Because with it comes increased responsibility for our lives.

To this point, Gerland Brenan said, “We are close to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.”

So make sure you’re looking forward to your free time and that you’re excited about what you can do with it—not dreading the responsibility. After all, your time is your life.