Learning to rest in a hustle-and-grind culture
Lessons from Josef Pieper, update on an incoming essay on false gods, and readings from this past week.
If you’re new around here, welcome to Wisdom Wednesdays - where I share wisdom from history’s greatest minds.
Friends,
This Saturday, I’ll be publishing an essay addressing the criticism directed at Harmeet Dhillon’s prayer at the recent Republican National Convention.
Initially, I hesitated to write this as I typically avoid political commentary here. My focus is on wisdom, meaning, beauty, art and craftsmanship. However, I share my thoughts to encourage us to extend grace and love to others, and to remind us that we are more alike than we often realize. In times like these, wisdom becomes crucial. Wisdom encourages understanding and thoughtful reflection, serving as a bridge towards a more peaceful world.
Originally, Saturday’s essay was intended for paid members only, but after much reflection, I’ve decided to make it available to all. I hope you enjoy today’s Wisdom Wednesday and look forward to this essay on Saturday.
Lessons from Josef Pieper on leisure and work
Break from this illusion that working every single minute makes your life meaningful. The “total work” state needs the spiritually impoverished, one-track mind of the functionary; and he, in his turn, is naturally inclined to find complete satisfaction in his service and thereby achieves the illusion of a life fulfilled which he acknowledges and willingly accepts.
Work can easily become a religion which promises a false salvation. In its extreme form the passion for work, naturally blind to every form of divine worship and often inimical to it, turns abruptly into its contrary, and work becomes a cult, becomes a religion.
Leisure is an active engagement and recreation (recreate yourself) to renew yourself and your mind. For leisure is a receptive attitude of mind, a contemplative attitude.
When resting, hone your intellectus not your logical mind. The Middle Ages drew a distinction between the understanding as ration and the understanding as intellectus. Ratio is the power of discursive, logical thought, of searching and of examination, of abstraction, of definition and drawing conclusions. Intellectus, on the other hand, is the name for the understanding in so far as it is the capacity of simplex intuitus, of that simple intuitus, of that simple vision to which truth offers itself like a landscape to the eye.
You need to carve out times when you are in leisure - a break from work to spend basking in beauty. The soul of leisure, it can be said, lies in celebration…. to rest from work means that time is reserved for divine worship: certain days and times are set aside and transferred to “the exclusive property of the Gods”.
Resting allows you to encounter what Diotima, in the Symposium, describes as the Beautiful, the Eternal One. Leisure is not the attitude of mind of those actively intervene, but of those who are open to everything; not of those who grab and grab hold, but of those who leave the reins loose and who are free and easy themselves—almost like a man falling asleep, for one can only fall asleep by “letting oneself go.”
Check out the episode on Josef Pieper and leisure for more wisdom.
Two things I enjoyed reading this past week:
Thomas Kuegler reminds us that our unhappiness is likely due to our unconstraint attachment to materialism.
To know what enough is is a sign of wisdom. Lao Tzu teaches this in Tao Te Ching:
Filling to fullness is not as good as stopping at the right moment. Oversharpening a blade causes its edge to be lost. Line your home with treasures and you won’t be able to defend it.
John Slaughter’s guest post on Johann Kurtz’s Becoming Noble. I recommend subscribing. Slaughter’s essay is accurate. Many people mistake meekness for weakness.
True meekness is the harmony of strength and humility, of displaying temperance in the face of conflict, and of having right judgement in difficult situations.
Till Saturday!
Thanks, I am glad you found the article interesting.