LE I SU R E
7 WAYS
to practice rest and leisure this summer
I
n Book VIII of his “Politics,” Aristotle observes, “The first principle of all action is leisure. Both (action & leisure) are required, but leisure is better than action and is its end; and therefore the question must be asked, what ought we to do when at leisure?” Even Aristotle seems to have wrestled with the age-old question that arises this time of year: what should we do for vacation? The word “vacation” itself tells us that we have our priorities backward, coming from the Latin “vacare” or, “to be unoccupied.” The assumption behind the term is that our “free time” is defined as the time in which we are not doing the thing we normally do, namely work. In other words, our work defines our free time. Now, work is something essentially human and therefore good. Only human beings work, properly speaking. Besides its utility for earning money, our work is one of the ways that we act as co-creators with God, tending the garden of creation, and it is one of the principal ways that we contribute to the common good. Work is
BY RYAN MAYER Director of Office of Catholic Identity Formation & Assessment, Archdiocese of San Francisco
6
JUNE 2022 | CATHOLIC SAN FRANCISCO
