On Leisure and of Liberty
There is a book out there that may have sparked the writing
of many books about the same subject. But it didn’t. As such, it retained the
qualities of the kind of book that most men would like to read but never found
the time to. It is called “Leisure, the basis of culture.” The title alone
makes you wonder why it has not been widely spread among the America’s.
But I have an answer to that. Of course I do and one you may
not like. It is because we have no sense of true liberty anymore that we cannot
even take the leisure of a good book that tells us what leisure is even about.
Give me the definition of a conundrum and I will give the answer that answers
why you have never read this book.
For leisure to take place there must of necessity be in
place the right frame of mind to allow it to be in the first place. And this we
call liberty. Liberty of conscience or you might rephrase this to mean liberty
of time and even liberty of spirit. It is all one in the same but it is not the
same for you and I who have to live it out independent of each other. And here
it might seem that I am putting yet another time constraint on you to try and
find the time to adhere to a little leisure.
I am not. The business of the farm, the job, the home
dictates what time you really have and yet, for all that its worth, I offer a
hope that lives within those very constraints as the book can be read in only a
few short hours.
But no matter the
book, the time is what is most pressing and is actually what I mean to discuss.
It is in time that we can discuss liberty and the means to get us from here to
there. In that time is found the liberty to do what we ought to, the means by
which she, liberty, is fostered and the wherewithal to see it discovered
properly, like gentleman if not even unto like the scholars. It can be done
with or without you but I would rather you be in than out of this one sir.
Commit to liberty and she will bring you leisure. And here is where I see the
whole thing played out.
Liberty is none other than the self in possession of
self-realization. It is the ability to choose what we ought to do and not as we
like in our given circumstance. Now, this is a hard thing to bear for a man, to
do as we ought and not as we like. But it is necessary if we are to gain access
to truth, which is the reason that leisure exists. You see, they run hand in
hand. Liberty of spirit allows us to enter in to leisure and leisure propels us
to enter into the something more, the essence of a life well lived.
It is in this life well lived that we encounter that which
matters most to us: family, work.
And yet this is the exact moment that we should retreat into
leisure since leisure exacts nothing from us than the being unto being. It is
in the way that we understand things that things are known to us, and if in
woodwork, you find the time to nurture your family than that is something you
should not live without. If I find the time to write fiction have I left my
family alone for so long that they are forgotten? Certainly not, it is a
balance between what I have to do and what I should be doing, and though the
two are entwined does not make them opposed at all but rather makes them whole,
as long as the one for my sanity is what makes her sane and whole.
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