On holidays: a week spent in a different place, and different in so many ways. A week in which I did not see a news bulletin or newspaper once, but enjoyed food with family, sporting events, outings, and rest. And time for some contemplation on the nature and meaning of life.
We stayed in an area very close to the Queensland – New South Wales border, where the beach and a massive river shape the entire region. It’s all about sun and surf: water sports and water craft are visible everywhere. Most homes seemed to have a boat or a caravan parked alongside, often both.
It all reminded me of two things from much earlier in my life. When I moved from the eight years I’d lived in the university context to an outer suburban setting, I experienced it as a cultural desert. The people were kind and warm, but the life seemed to me so shallow. It was all about houses, cars, and the immediacy of work and family—and I confess that I knew and understood so little of that. My head was full of complex (and important) theological, ethical, and philosophical ideas and issues, which seemed of no relevance to these people The great discipline of my life at that time, as a local pastor, was to discover how and explain how these things were and are profoundly related. I had so much to learn.
Then, too, there was so much discussion of the leisure society. With rapid technological advances it was imagined that working hours could be dramatically reduced. The challenge of the day was: How will we adapt to being a society primarily at leisure? What will we do with all that time?
Well, that never happened, but I remember discussions and books, conferences and church groups exploring the possibilities.This all came back to me as I walked and looked around a context so different from my own inner suburban life.
- Several things were very clear, and I consider them very good things.
Proximity to the elements is so obvious. It can be very hot, but mostly people are able to live outside, enjoying the warmth. It can rain a lot, but much of it passes just as quickly as it came. Sun, sand, surf, and the open sky: you know you are alive.
It is clear, in this context, that work does not dominate life, even though people have to work just as much as anywhere else. I imagine that many people live here precisely for what they can do when not at work.
Reflecting further upon ‘a leisure society’, I began to consider several other possible implications. Whereas in my own life reading has always been crucial, and a source of pleasure as I’ve explored many topics and areas of interest, I realize also the extent to which reading has for me been an obligation, almost a moral imperative. What if I consider reading as a choice rather than an obligation? There is great freedom in that idea: to read or not to read, to read whatever I choose and whenever I am so inclined.
Similarly, I began to think about human relationships and interaction. In a ‘leisure society’, the primary contact is not with work colleagues, but again a matter of choice. For sure, there are the ‘incidental’ interactions with people, in shops or local activity centres. Perhaps these are the primary contexts for connection, for meaning. I have always tried to allow those interactions to be more than merely ‘roles’, but to take and offer some human interest in the people I encounter. The people who do really poorly paid work at the shops, for instance, are often immediately responsive to some genuine human contact!
- I used the word contemplation in the title of this post. It’s a word that relates to how we live: do we live without reflection upon what is happening around us and to us? That, I think, is exactly what would make life a cultural and personal desert, a place devoid of meaning. What I have learned, from living in many different communities and contexts, is that it is not the patterns of housing as such that determine these matters. Just as one can be lonely in a crowd, it is all a matter of human engagement, people with people and people with the world around us.
Every context and every period of life offers the possibility of such contemplation: it will not always be about a quiet time to think and feel. It may indeed be a frantic time of work or a time of very strenuous and demanding activity. Within every period of our lives, we need to reflect: to look upon the world, people, children and adults, animals and plants, and belong to it, welcome and love it, receive from it and find something to give. Contemplation is such a receiving and giving, and enables us to live differently—more deeply, with value, joy and pain, and in this to find some hope.
It is a great privilege to have more time for such a life. It’s neither work nor leisure. It’s just the gift of life!