The quality of idleness – Sunday, September 13, 1959
We closed last week with a quoted comment that “the outlook for our country lies in the quality of its idleness. . . .”1 To this we would add that the outlook of an individual lies in the quality of his idleness also.
There comes a time in the lives of those who live longer, when, for one reason or another, they must alter their activities. Things change, and people change, and personnel and procedures change.
There is no man-made job that continues always and forever, and no earthly tenure that is unending. And those who live out the lengthening years of life face always the prospect of altered activities, and of a possible time of retirement.
Men vary from the feeling that retirement is a hoped-for utopia, to the feeling that it is an intolerable inactivity. But a change of responsibilities does not mean that one should sit on the side lines. There is infinitely much undone.
There is infinitely much to be done. There is much need of mature judgement, of mature emotions, of the experience and steadying leadership that those older can give to those younger. One of the functions of the mature mind, said Maurice Linden, is “keeping alive human judgment, of maintaining human skills. . . .”2 And it isn’t reasonable to become accustomed to work and its great good, all the long length of life, and then be content altogether without it.
Whenever life is organized around idleness or inactivity, there is an emptiness. Life always asks of us a certain amount of flexibility, and always inevitably it asks of us adjustments to the changing years of time—but it does not ask of us the retirement of idleness, but only of altered activity.
“The old retain their intellectual powers provided their interests and inclination continue,”‘ said Cicero. “What one has, that one ought to use; … to each is allotted its appropriate quality . . . and so the feebleness of children, as well as the high spirit of youth, the soberness of mature years, and the ripe wisdom of . . . age—all have a certain natural advantage which should be (garnered) in its proper season.”3
And so long as a person feels useful—is useful—and flexible—and enjoys willing work—he is more likely to lengthen the health and happiness of life.
1 Irwin Edman, On American Leisure
2 Maurice Linden, M.D., The Human Life Cycle
3 Cicero, On Old Age
September 13, 1959
Broadcast Number 1,569