But as I can attest, this assumption fails for many people. His prediction assumes that leisure comes naturally, without practice, effort, or experience. For Keynes, hard work was not an end in itself, but a means to something more enjoyable: peace and relaxation, free from worldly cares. The economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in 1930 that his grandchildren would be able to work about three hours a day. The 20th-century philosopher Josef Pieper agreed, calling leisure the “basis of culture.”įor many years, leisure was thought to be the golden promise of prosperity. Leisure, for him, was different still: an end in itself, the pinnacle of human life-almost divine. Recreation, in his view, was something we did merely to take a break from work-so we could get back to work afterward. Want to stay current with Arthur’s writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out.Ī ristotle defined work as useful activity. If you are in this category, nothing should be high on your to-do list. For the sake of happiness, strivers and hard-driving work machines of any income level need to learn to stop. Whenever I make an effort to rest, my mind always wanders back to the work I am fleeing.Īs difficult as it may be, Formica has the right idea.
#THE MEANING OF UTTERLY MOVIE#
But when I try, I find I am utterly incompetent: Idle chitchat drives me crazy I get the jimmy legs 30 minutes into a movie sitting on a beach is a form of torture. I work long hours and have sometimes planned to go away and do nothing just for a week or two. Besides the fact that you need to have a good deal of financial security to quit working, “it is awfully hard work doing nothing,” as Algernon said in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.
When pressed about his plans, he said, “I just want to go sit at the beach and do nothing.”Įasy, right? Not for a lot of us, it isn’t. He did not have another job waiting-or anything else, it seems. Andrew Formica, the 51-year-old CEO of a $68 billion investment firm, abruptly quit his job. I n the midst of financial news that seems to get grimmer by the day, one story of a man trying to escape caught my eye.
#THE MEANING OF UTTERLY HOW TO#
Click here to listen to his podcast series on all things happiness, How to Build a Happy Life.
“ How to Build a Life ” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
0 kommentar(er)
