The Sentinel Insomnia Post: Why Your Weekend Isn't Real Rest

Josef Pieper

Using the weekend to recharge your batteries or seeing time off as the breather before more time on, is a sign of how bad things have become. The German philosopher Josef Pieper argued that we shouldn't see leisure simply as the absence of work. It is not confined to two days at the weekend. It is not a lie-in, a spa day, or even self-care.

Pieper argued that leisure is when we are receptive to the deeper parts of life: meaning, beauty, truth, friendship, and even God. He argued that we deny this receptivity for two reasons. The first is that we no longer believe rest has any value of its own. If you're not working, you are wasting time.

The second is more troubling, and this is that we see rest as an opportunity to aid future productivity. We lie about on the sofa so we can be at our desk first thing on Monday morning. We rest at the weekend to be more productive in the working week.

For Pieper, a culture that loses a sense of leisure loses something essential. Because when we deny ourselves the opportunity of genuine rest, we miss things like meaning, connection, and genuine friendships. A world that suffocates leisure, and denies rest without an excuse or a reason, is denying us access to the deeper and most important parts of being a human being in the first place.