"The essence of virtue consists in the good rather than in the difficult." "Not everything that is more difficult is necessarily more meritorious; it must be more difficult in such a way that it is at the same time good in yet a higher way."
I'm the sort of ENTP personality that only discovers truth in the way that other people discover grave injury; truth tends to broadside me like 2x4 and then in the smart afterwards I recollect that this new idea has a profound influence on my life. And thus, this strange person before you approaches Thanksgiving with a myriad of new thoughts . . .
I tend to approach life according to the fallacy of "harder is better." My husband honestly had to stop my effusion of ideas for Thanksgiving dinner and forbid me from making half of it. [Ironically, the things that remained on the list to be made from scratch are all his favorite foods.] In my mind, I'm not truly "hosting" Thanksgiving dinner if I am not in the kitchen all day creating a culinary masterpiece. Naturally, I also think this would be a grand weekend to potty-train JT. If harder is better, than my break looks like a perfect recipe for success.
Yet, Aquinas argues that this attitude is warped. Pieper explains, "The highest moral good is characterized by effortlessness--because it springs from love. The tendency to overvalue hard work and the effort of doing something difficult is so deep-rooted that it even infects our notion of love." My notion of "loving" my family is more focused on the effort involved than on creating the proper environment of rest and relaxation when my family arrives from a tedious trek down the coastline all day. Alice vonHildebrand would say I'm missing the "theme" of the moment by setting my schedule to a pace beyond that which would best answer the needs of the ones loved and expected. This is as if my family were hoping to listen to Handle's "Water Music" and were met instead by the "William Tell Overture" on full volume.
Yet, in his reflections on leisure, neither does Pieper desire that I be lazy and idle around the house all day. In fact, before our maniacal society made frenzied work the ideal, unnecessary labor was seen as the product of restlessness stemming from laziness. Kierkegaard went so far in condemning this acedia to define it as the "despairing refusal to be oneself!" Perhaps, our society no longer understands true leisure so we are lazy in our "time off;" many of us can't handle the ennui of leisure as nothingness, so we find ways to make ourselves busy unnecessarily. At least the work makes us feel more "ourselves" than sitting passively in front of a tv does.
So, I have bought paper plates to replace the fine ones and delegated 1/3 of the dinner to others . . . now, how ought I spend a day in leisure with my family? Let's turn back to Pieper:
"Leisure, it must be clearly understood, is a mental and spiritual attitude--it is not simply the result of external factors, it is not the inevitable result of spare time, a holiday, a week-end or a vacation. . . . leisure implies (in the first place) an attitide of non-activity, of inward calm, of silence; it means not being 'busy,' but letting things happen. Leisure is a form of silence, of that silence which is the prerequisite of the apprehension of reality." Leisure is receptive to life.
We are to "let our minds rest" as we contemplate the beauty of our family and friends gathered around. We are to take on an attitude of "contemplative 'celebration'" of the world around us, and ultimately, of the Creator who also rested and looked upon this world and called it "good." Pieper says that feast-days (religious and semi-religious like Thanksgiving) are not a mere break from reality, they are an opportunity for us to express a deeper connection with the reality in which we find our source and final destination.
Thus, our celebrations, our leisure, are justified and drawn from divine worship. Thanksgiving then becomes not a celebration of a single historical event or even of a surplus of material goods that may be consumed; it is a celebration of God and His Providence which is above measure and which expresses itself variously in plenty and in famine. Leisure lies in the realm beyond the utilitarian.
I'm a mom. Work in some way must be part of my "labor of love" for my family. But, I hope to stay focused on what is best about that day--celebrating "being" with my family, not just "doing" the things glorified in every holiday magazine as appropriate. Perhaps I will go and crunch through leaves and sing songs with my little son; perhaps I will shut off the tv and engage my family in conversation so that I may more authentically love and know the people God has placed in my life. And certainly, I will not feel guilty about using paper plates.
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1 comment:
Lovely and most helpful thoughts! I definitely needed this as I enter pre-Christmas week! :)
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