USE OF LEISURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 22, Issue 551, 13 January 1950, Page 5

USE OF LEISURE

Sir,-Your leader of December 2, on the use of leisure, spotlights a central problem of contemporary life. We have as a nation no conception of the ‘proper use of leisure. A negative approach to the forty-hour week, discussing it as an escape from work rather than an increase in leisure, has passed unnoticed for years. Our schools equate leisure with sport. It is hardly fair, however, to dismiss the problem by pointing out that work and leisure are not absolute opposites. I myself, working as a librarian, find that in taking an active interest in my work Iam spending my time much as I might if I did not have to work at all. But as a student during vacations I worked in many jobs where the deadly factory. routine precluded an intelligent interest in work. It was interesting to me for a month as a new experience and an opportunity to meet people more alive than those I was used to, but until mechanisation eliminates jobs of this.nature many men must centre their lives off the job. An attempt to combine mental activity with such work (as, in my experience, with shaving) leads to the problem of "industrial accidents caused by daydreaming." (Housman, you will remember, cut himself remembering a line from Milton.) ‘We need more leisure to think, to feel and to rest. We do not think. The complicated dé@tail of modern politics is not mastered or even dimly understood by the majority of voters who have little leisure and -use it wrongly. Even those whose work is intellectual stop thinking when the whistle blows and remain specialists. ; We do not learn to feel. Some time for interest in good reading is necessary

before people will understand the humanity of others in other lands. The untidy approximation of interests seen in martied couples is relevant: -A young marfried. couple have far too few moments together for intimate discussion which must be given a little time to grow. Most lose interest in each other while still strangers and become average, anxious New Zealanders. Then one must rest a little. A little troubled sleep against a background of the neighbour’s wireless and rattling trams is not enough. We may live months in a city without experiencing genuine silence. The healing effects of silence are so little known that to mention them must suggest mysticism. If this letter is not convincing, it is perhaps because it has had to be composed in odd moments.

G. W.

TURNER

(Christchurch)