Vox Meditantis

“What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?” This deceptively simple question appears on countless job applications, interviews, and social icebreakers. The answers tend to be predictable: reading, travel, sports, time with family. Yet beneath these superficial responses lies a profound puzzle about what leisure actually is and why it matters so fundamentally to human existence.

Modern people often treat leisure as an earned intermission – a brief respite from the grind of work, a period of “recharging the batteries” before returning to what really matters. But this conception would baffle Aristotle, perplex medieval theologians, and contradict centuries of philosophical wisdom. These thinkers saw leisure not as compensation for work, but as the highest expression of human potential, a state essential to becoming fully human. When we ask what brings us joy in our free time, we are really asking: What do I believe makes life worth living?

To answer this question properly requires understanding leisure through multiple lenses. History shows us that our relationship with free time has undergone a seismic transformation. Philosophy reveals that ancient thinkers ranked leisure above all other activities. Theology teaches that rest is sacred, not selfish. Sociology exposes how leisure choices signal social identity and reproduce inequality. Psychology demonstrates that not all pleasures are equal – some trivialise our capacities while others awaken them.

This essay explores what we enjoy doing in our leisure time by investigating why we enjoy it, where these preferences come from, and what they reveal about who we are becoming. The journey spans from ancient Greek city-states to the age of streaming services, from contemplative monasteries to the paradox of endless choice, from the virtue of contemplation to the psychology of flow. What emerges is a surprising conclusion: our leisure choices are far more consequential than we imagine, and the quality of our lives depends on learning to choose wisely.

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Part I: The Humanities – The Meaning of Rest

1. Historical Evolution: From Sacred Otium to the Industrialised Weekend

The Classical Ideal

The word “leisure” itself derives from the Latin licere, meaning “to be permitted.” But in ancient Greece and Rome, the concept that captivated philosophers was far richer. The Greeks spoke of schole (σχολή), often translated as “leisure,” but better understood as the freedom and spaciousness required for the highest human pursuits. The Romans developed the complementary pair otium and negotium – leisure and business, rest and work – as fundamental categories of existence.[1]

For the ancient Greeks, leisure was not merely the absence of labour; it was a sacred opportunity to engage with the highest pursuits of human existence. In Athenian society, the elite possessed the luxury of genuine free time. They devoted themselves to philosophy, rhetoric, mathematics, art, and governance – activities that shaped the entire intellectual trajectory of Western civilisation. Aristotle’s Lyceum, Plato’s Academy, and the agora (marketplace) where citizens debated political matters were all products of a leisure class with the freedom to think and create.[1]

Yet this vision rested on a profoundly troubling foundation: slavery. Manual labour and commerce were “relegated to slaves and non-citizens,” freeing the elite to pursue what they considered higher-order thinking. This ethical problem – that contemplation was purchased through the bondage of others – haunts the classical ideal even as its philosophical insights remain timeless.[1]

The Romans inherited and adapted the Greek conception, integrating it into their vision of otium et negotium. For Roman thinkers like Cicero and Seneca, leisure was not a period of indolence but a time for self-improvement and preparation for public service. Cicero articulated the influential concept of otium cum dignitate – leisure with dignity – which suggested that true leisure must involve intellectual pursuits, philosophical reflection, and activities that contribute to personal and social betterment. Seneca, in his fragmentary work De Otio, challenged the Roman emphasis on public service by arguing that “contemplative retirement can be as valuable to society as active political engagement.” His famous observation that “life is not short if you know how to use it” became a meditation on how to balance engagement with the world against periods of reflective withdrawal.[2][1]

In these classical formulations, leisure was not a luxury commodity or a recovery strategy. It was the very condition that made human excellence possible – the space in which a person could become most fully themselves.

The Medieval Synthesis

During the Middle Ages, Christian theology reframed leisure through a new lens. Augustine portrayed leisure as a state of interior rest – a respite from worldly distractions that enabled deeper reflection on eternal truths. Monasteries became epicentres of intellectual life, where monks freed from secular labour engaged in manuscript copying, scientific experiment, and theological composition. The contemplative ideal reached its philosophical apex in Thomas Aquinas, who synthesised Aristotelian and Christian thought to argue that contemplation – the highest form of leisure – was the ultimate human activity.[3][1]

Aquinas’s vision was radical in its implications. In his Summa Theologiae, he argued that the moral virtues and prudence serve the higher end of procuring tranquility of mind necessary for contemplation. All activities of civic life – politics, commerce, justice – existed ultimately to secure the exterior peace necessary for contemplation of truth. This was not hierarchical disdain for the practical world but a metaphysical claim: all action points toward and exists for the sake of understanding.[4]

Importantly, Aquinas recognised that contemplation was not empty idleness. It required its own kind of labour – the metaphorical work of studying the liberal arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy), which produced knowledge without exchange value, knowledge that was liberated from the demands of earthly utility. In this medieval vision, the best life involved both vita activa (active life) and vita contemplativa (contemplative life), with the latter having ultimate precedence.[3]

The Industrial Revolution: Leisure Commodified

Everything changed with industrialisation. The shift from agricultural to manufacturing economies fundamentally altered humanity’s relationship with time itself. In medieval England, artisans worked roughly 8 hours per day, with significant spare time that allowed supplementary income and leisure pursuits. By the seventeenth century, work days had stretched to 12-14 hours. By 1840, the yearly hourly workload for industrial workers had nearly doubled, to between 3,100 and 3,600 hours annually, based on a 70-hour workweek.[5]

This expansion of working hours was not inevitable or accidental. It was systematised. As one historian notes, “one of the major changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution was instituting a system where workers had no power to withhold their labour.” Previously, a medieval or Renaissance craftsman who felt mistreated could leave a master and seek work elsewhere. Industrial capitalism created structures of dependence that made such exit nearly impossible.[5]

The factory system transformed leisure from a state of being (the otium of the Greek elite) into a commodity to be earned and consumed. Work expanded not because production required it, but because wage labour required workers with no bargaining power. The psychological shift was equally profound: instead of leisure as the space for flourishing, it became what you do when you are not producing value for someone else.[5]

Real wages did eventually rise – between 1819 and 1851, wages for blue-collar workers doubled according to the Lindert-Williamson index – but the gains were unequally distributed and came after decades of suffering. The price paid for the promise of eventual prosperity was the loss of control over time itself. For the first time in human history, the majority of people experienced leisure not as a natural rhythm of life but as an increasingly scarce and fiercely contested resource.[6][5]

The psychological impact was profound. As industrial discipline became cultural norm, leisure shifted from being understood as the apex of human capability to being reframed as mere recovery – time to “recharge” so that workers could be productive tomorrow. This inversion of values, from leisure-as-flourishing to leisure-as-recharging, became so naturalised that we rarely question it today.

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2. Philosophy: The Aristotelian Ideal Versus Modern Instrumentalism

Eudaimonia and the Goal of Life

Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics begins with a striking claim: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.” Everything humans do is aimed at something perceived as good. But goods form a hierarchy. We pursue some goods as means to other ends, while some goods are pursued for their own sake. The ultimate good – that which is sought for itself and never as a means to something else – Aristotle called eudaimonia, often translated as happiness but better understood as flourishing or living well.[7][8]

Here emerges Aristotle’s central insight about leisure: eudaimonia is not achievable through work; it is achievable only through leisure. Human flourishing requires the freedom to develop virtues – moral excellences that perfect the human soul. These virtues cannot be developed while enslaved to survival or to labour for another’s benefit. They require schole: the space and time to think, to deliberate, to practise virtue, to contemplate truth.[9][7]

Crucially, Aristotle rejected what we might call “hedonism” as the path to happiness. Some people, he observed, pursue pleasure as their ultimate goal, living from one gratification to the next. Others pursue wealth or honour, believing these will bring happiness. But Aristotle argued that pleasure, wealth, and honour are not ultimate goods – they are, at best, instrumental goods or byproducts of genuine flourishing.[8][7]

Why? Because true happiness involves “activity of soul in accordance with virtue.” It is not a feeling to be chased but a state to be cultivated through practise and habituation. Virtue is like learning a musical instrument: the more you practise, the better you become. Pleasure can be a byproduct of this development, but it cannot be the goal.[10][7]

Aristotle also recognised that people differ in what they pursue. He identified three categories: the pleasure-seekers (driven by basic desires, living from one experience to the next – “the lowest forms of happiness”); the honour-seekers (those seeking knowledge and recognition in politics and affairs – a middle ground); and the contemplators (philosophers and thinkers for whom the pursuit of truth through intellectual activity constitutes the highest happiness). The last group, Aristotle implied, had grasped something true about human nature.[10]

Contemplation as the Highest Activity

In Book X of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle explicitly elevates contemplative activity above all else. The contemplative life, he argues, is “supremely happy” because it engages the highest part of the human soul – the intellect – in its proper activity, which is the understanding of eternal truths. Unlike practical wisdom, which remains entangled with external circumstances and the needs of the body, contemplation is free. It is “self-sufficient, leisurely, unwearying.”[7]

This does not mean that action is unimportant. The virtuous person acts justly, courageously, and wisely in the world. But these activities are ultimately oriented toward creating the conditions for contemplation. A well-run state, fair laws, and just institutions exist to provide citizens with the peace and security necessary to contemplate truth. As one medieval inheritor of Aristotelian thought put it: “So that, properly considered, all the activities of human life seem to be for the service of those engaged in the contemplation of Truth.”[4]

What distinguishes Aristotle’s vision from modern conceptions of leisure is this orientation. We often think of leisure as personal pleasure – doing what makes you feel good. But Aristotle saw leisure as fundamentally directed toward human excellence, toward becoming the best version of yourself. It is active, not passive. It develops capacities, not merely distracts from labour.

The Modern Inversion

The modern understanding reverses this priority. Today, leisure is typically understood as recovery from work, not as the goal that work serves. We work to earn leisure; we do not work in order to have the security and freedom to pursue our highest capacities. Leisure has become instrumental – a means to recharge so that we can work more productively.

This inversion is so complete that many of us feel guilty for “wasting time” on contemplation or artistic pursuits that don’t produce income or measurable results. We optimise our leisure time, seeking maximum enjoyment in minimum duration. We treat free time as a scarce resource to be managed rather than as an opening for the soul to breathe.

Yet Aristotle’s insight remains suggestive: might the quality of our leisure reveal the quality of our lives? If leisure is understood as time to pursue virtue, to develop our capacities, to contemplate what matters most, then the question “What do you enjoy doing in your leisure time?” becomes a profound question about character and aspiration. It asks: What do you value most? What capacities are you cultivating? What kind of person are you becoming?

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3. Theology: Sacred Time and Redemptive Rest

The Sabbath as Sanctuary in Time

While philosophy spoke of leisure as human flourishing, theology approached rest from a different angle – as a divine command and a sacred practice. The concept of the Sabbath, rooted in Jewish law and later adopted by Christianity, reframes leisure not as individual privilege but as a practice essential to spiritual freedom and human dignity.

The biblical Sabbath is not merely a day off; it is a “sanctuary in time.” After creating the world, God did not simply cease working; God “stopped and enjoyed what he had made.” The pattern of six days of labour followed by a day of rest was given as a commandment to Israel, but the rationale connects leisure directly to freedom. In Deuteronomy, God ties the Sabbath to the exodus from slavery: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”[11]

This theological connection is profound. Just as God liberated the Hebrew people from slavery, Sabbath rest represents liberation from the ceaseless demands of labour and productivity. To refuse rest is to enslave oneself – to become a slave to ambition, to the need for success, to exploitative systems, or to cultural expectations. Authentic Sabbath rest requires not merely physical cessation from work but spiritual rest in God’s provision. As one medieval commentator on Hebrews argues, Sabbath rest involves trust that God has provided sufficiently, that we do not need to justify ourselves through endless productivity.[11]

The theological insight here echoes Aristotle’s intuition but from a different source: rest is not a luxury or a reward earned through labour. It is a fundamental right, a declaration of freedom, a refusal to let productivity define your value as a human being. To practice Sabbath is to assert, “I am not my work. My worth does not depend on what I produce.”

Ecclesiastes and the Problem of Hedonism

Yet theology also cautions against a superficial understanding of leisure as mere pleasure-seeking. The book of Ecclesiastes presents a profound meditation on this danger. The Preacher, after exploring wisdom as a path to meaning, turns to the pursuit of pleasure, intending to “gather all goods, find out what is good for eating and drinking, and what would be pleasant in one’s work.”[12]

The Preacher’s conclusion is stark: “Behold, this also was vanity.” Pleasure, pursued as an ultimate end, fails to satisfy the human soul. The hedonist faces what philosophers call the “hedonistic paradox”: the more directly you pursue pleasure, the more elusive it becomes. The person who lives for pleasure often finds themselves trapped in endless cycles of diminishing satisfaction, always chasing the next experience, never content.[13][12]

Why does pleasure fail? Because humans are created for something beyond themselves. As Ecclesiastes implies, we are made to know God and to find our deepest joy in relationship with the Creator, not in created things. When we seek ultimate satisfaction in pleasure – in food, drink, entertainment, or sensory experience – we are “seeking in pleasure what can be found only in the Creator.”[14][12]

This does not mean that pleasure is evil or that Ecclesiastes advocates for grim asceticism. Rather, the wisdom tradition suggests that authentic joy emerges as a byproduct of living rightly, not as a direct pursuit. As contemporary theologian points out, “There is such a thing as holy and legitimate pleasure. For the people of God there is meaningful hedonism – pleasure that comes in the enjoyment of God.” The Preacher’s argument is not against pleasure but against the idolatry of pleasure, the false belief that leisure fulfilment lies in sensory gratification alone.[14]

Thomas Aquinas and the Virtue of Recreation

The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas inherited both Aristotelian and biblical wisdom and synthesised them into a remarkable position on leisure. Aquinas recognised a virtue he called eutrapelia – often translated as “proper recreation” or “wittiness.” This is the virtue of knowing how to relax, to play, to engage in activities that refresh body and mind without either excessive frivolity or grim puritanism.[15]

Aquinas argues that recreation is morally legitimate and even necessary. “It was righteous recreation for Him who rested after the work of Creation and who commanded man to rest at the beginning of each week.” Yet this recreation must be properly ordered – it should refresh us so that we return to virtue, not so that we become enslaved to amusement or excess.[15]

Importantly, Aquinas insists that the purpose of recreation is to “breathe into all the other moments of the week a peace that allows us to recognise that everything comes from God and returns to Him.” Recreation, in this theological vision, is a means of recognising dependence on divine providence and participating in the rhythm of creation itself. It is not escape from spiritual life but an essential part of living faithfully.[15]

The convergence of Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, and the biblical wisdom writers points to a shared insight: leisure is not peripheral to the good life; it is central. But genuine leisure, as opposed to mere distraction or indulgence, must be understood as ordered toward human flourishing (eudaimonia), spiritual freedom (Sabbath rest), and virtue (eutrapelia). These traditions suggest that what we do in our free time matters profoundly – not because productivity is the measure of worth, but because leisure is the space in which we become who we most deeply are.

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Part II: The Social Sciences – The Context of Choice

4. Sociology: Class, Status, and the Inequality of Leisure

Conspicuous Leisure and Social Distinction

The American sociologist Thorstein Veblen, writing at the end of the nineteenth century during the Gilded Age, developed a theory that fundamentally challenged the idea that leisure choices are purely personal or reflective of individual taste. In The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen argued that leisure activities are often chosen not for their intrinsic enjoyment but for their capacity to display wealth and social status.[16][17]

Veblen introduced the concept of “conspicuous leisure” – engaging in forms of leisure specifically chosen to demonstrate that one does not need to work, that one has the economic power to abstain from productive activity. In pre-industrial societies, ownership of land served this function. During the Middle Ages, the nobility was exempted from manual labour precisely because the inability to work signalled wealth and high birth. But as industrial society developed and wealth became more fluid, new forms of conspicuous leisure emerged.[16]

The leisure class – those with sufficient wealth to abstain from labour – validated their status through activities that required time, money, and cultural sophistication. Yachting, golf, art collecting, foreign travel, and participation in exclusive clubs all served a function beyond immediate enjoyment: they signalled to others, “I have the resources and refinement that come with not needing to work.”[17][16]

Veblen’s more famous concept, “conspicuous consumption,” describes how this dynamic extends to purchasing. When conspicuous leisure becomes harder to display (as everyone has some free time in industrial societies), the leisure class shifts to displaying wealth through consumption of luxury goods. Designer clothing, expensive jewellery, luxury vehicles, and high-end dining all serve the same function as medieval exemption from labour: they announce to the world that the wearer possesses surplus resources.[17][16]

The psychological mechanism underlying this behaviour is what Veblen called “invidious distinction” – the desire to distinguish oneself favourably from others, to provoke their envy. Status is inherently comparative in human societies. I feel wealthy not when I have enough in absolute terms but when I have more than those around me. This creates what Veblen observed as a tragic cycle: the wealthy must perpetually consume and display more than their peers to maintain status, driving them into the endless pursuit of wealth and leisure activities designed to advertise that wealth.[18][17]

Veblen’s observations, made over a century ago, have only intensified with technology. Social media has transformed leisure into a permanent stage for conspicuous consumption. People photograph their vacations, meals, gym sessions, and leisure activities and post them online – not merely to enjoy them, but to broadcast their lifestyle to an audience. The value of a leisure experience is partially determined by its visibility and capacity to generate admiration (or envy) from others. A vacation that is not posted is, in a sense, incomplete – it has failed to generate the status advantage intended.[18]

The Reproduction of Inequality

While Veblen focused on the ultra-wealthy, his framework applies throughout the class system. Each income level attempts to distinguish itself from those below through carefully curated leisure choices. The middle class uses “cultural capital” – knowledge of refined pursuits, ability to discuss art and literature, participation in educational leisure activities – to distinguish itself from the working class. The working class, unable to afford expensive leisure activities, may be stereotyped as passive consumers of mass media entertainment.[19]

Research on physical activity patterns reveals stark socioeconomic disparities. Higher-income individuals engage significantly more in leisure-time physical activity – 68% of studies show positive associations between high socioeconomic position and leisure-time physical activity. Vigorous leisure-time physical activity shows even starker inequality, with 76% of studies documenting higher participation among the wealthy.[20]

Meanwhile, lower-income workers often experience the inverse problem: they perform more physical labour at work (occupational physical activity is 63% higher among lower socioeconomic groups) but have less capacity for enjoyable leisure-time physical activity. This creates a perverse situation where those who need physical activity for stress relief after exhausting manual labour have least access to it, while the wealthy enjoy both exercise and leisure.[20]

The distribution of leisure time itself reflects and reproduces inequality. As one research paper notes, “the income poor have less leisure time” because “low wages lead to higher working hours and more domestic work, as fewer market substitutes can be purchased.” A family living paycheck-to-paycheck may include multiple wage earners working long hours, with additional unpaid domestic labour consuming free time. Meanwhile, wealthier families can purchase domestic and childcare services, freeing time for enriching leisure activities.[21]

Television watching and digital media consumption, meanwhile, have become increasingly associated with lower-income leisure. Time-use data show that as television watching has increased across the population, it has particularly increased among lower-income groups, compensating for decreases in social leisure and cultural activities. This is not because lower-income people inherently prefer passive entertainment – it reflects the reality that engaging entertainment (travel, fine dining, cultural events, sports) requires money that lower-income households lack.[19]

The Digital Divide and New Forms of Inequality

Technology promised to democratise leisure. Streaming services offer cultural content at a fraction of the cost of cinema tickets. Video games provide entertainment for relatively modest investment. Social media connects people across the globe. Yet new forms of inequality have emerged alongside these benefits.

The “attention economy” has created new status hierarchies based on the ability to perform affluent leisure. The Instagram lifestyle of yoga retreats, exotic travel, wellness products, and curated home aesthetics is accessible primarily to those with disposable income. Those unable to participate are implicitly marked as lacking not just resources but taste, refinement, and success.[18]

Meanwhile, wealthy individuals increasingly seek “unplugged” leisure – digital detoxes, silent retreats, rural escapes – precisely because constant connectivity and performance fatigue has made these experiences scarce and therefore valuable. The ultimate status symbol has become the ability to opt out of the visibility economy, to afford privacy, to have leisure time that is genuinely free from the need to produce social proof.[22]

Working-class individuals, by contrast, often rely on freely available digital entertainment precisely because they lack alternative options. This creates a feedback loop: higher-income individuals develop cultural capital through active, enriching leisure; lower-income individuals develop passive consumption habits born of constraint. Over time, these leisure patterns become identity markers and sources of shame or pride, further entrenching inequality.

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5. Psychology: The Architecture of Genuine Enjoyment

The Flow State: Beyond Passive Pleasure

If sociology explains why we choose certain leisure activities (status, social position, available resources), psychology investigates what actually feels good – and reveals surprising truths about the relationship between pleasure and meaning.

The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, through decades of research, identified a psychological state he called “flow” – a state of complete absorption in an activity where self-consciousness disappears and time seems to distort. In flow, the person is utterly immersed in the present moment. Hours pass like minutes. The sense of self dissolves into the activity itself. There is no space for self-doubt or anxiety because full attention is devoted to the task at hand.[23][24]

Flow is not mere pleasure. It is a complex alignment of psychological factors that must occur together. According to Csikszentmihalyi’s research, flow requires:[23]

• Clear goals and immediate feedback: You know what you’re trying to do and whether you’re succeeding.
• Optimal challenge: The difficulty of the task matches your skill level – difficult enough to require full engagement but not so difficult that you feel overwhelmed or anxious.
• Merged action and awareness: You are not conscious of acting; action and awareness become one.
• Concentration: Full focus on the present moment without mental wandering.
• Sense of control: A feeling of agency, that you are in control of your actions and their outcomes.
• Loss of self-consciousness: The ego steps back; the person is no longer worried about how they appear to others.
• Transformation of time: Temporal experience becomes distorted; hours feel like minutes.
• Autotelic experience: The activity is intrinsically rewarding – worth doing for its own sake, not as a means to external reward.[23]

These conditions describe vastly different leisure activities: a chess player in intense concentration, a rock climber navigating a challenging route, a musician lost in performance, a writer absorbed in creation, an athlete performing at the edge of their capacities, an artist in the zone. The common thread is not the specific activity but the psychological condition: full engagement of the self in something that challenges and rewards simultaneously.

Remarkably, Csikszentmihalyi’s research found that flow experiences – far from being easily accessed – occur surprisingly rarely in most people’s lives. Many people never experience flow regularly. Instead, they occupy what Csikszentmihalyi called “non-flow” states: relaxation, apathy, anxiety, or boredom. These states are far more common in modern life, particularly during leisure time.[25]

The neurological basis for flow adds another layer of understanding. During flow, there is decreased activity in the prefrontal cortex, the brain’s centre of executive function and self-monitoring – a phenomenon known as “transient hypofrontality.” In other words, the part of the brain that judges, worries, and maintains self-consciousness temporarily steps back. This is why flow experiences feel so liberating and why people report that time in flow is genuinely “restorative” in ways that passive relaxation is not.[23]

Passive Pleasure and Its Discontents

Flow states can be contrasted with what we might call “passive pleasures” – activities that provide immediate sensory gratification without requiring skill development or active engagement. Watching television, scrolling social media, eating junk food, and consuming other passive entertainment can certainly feel pleasurable in the moment. They activate reward pathways in the brain. But they differ fundamentally from flow in their structure and their long-term effects.

Passive pleasures typically require no challenge, no skill development, no sense of accomplishment. The person is not absorbed in the activity; part of their mind remains engaged in self-monitoring and internal commentary. The pleasure is often tinged with a sense of time-wasting, of “I should be doing something more meaningful.” And crucially, the pleasure tends to adapt and diminish with repetition. The more you do it, the less satisfying it becomes, leading to escalating consumption in search of the same reward.

Csikszentmihalyi’s research suggests that people who rely primarily on passive pleasures for leisure report lower life satisfaction than those who engage in flow-producing activities. Yet modern life has been engineered to make passive pleasure more accessible than ever. Streaming services provide infinite content designed to keep us watching. Social media platforms use sophisticated algorithms to trigger compulsive engagement. Ultra-processed foods activate the brain’s reward system more powerfully than whole foods. The architecture of modern leisure often makes flow-producing activities harder to access than passive consumption.

The Broaden-and-Build Theory: How Positive Emotions Create Resources

While flow describes the immediate experience of engaged leisure, another psychological framework explains how leisure contributes to well-being over time. The “broaden-and-build theory,” developed by Barbara Fredrickson, proposes that positive emotions are not merely momentary pleasures but catalysts for building psychological resilience.[26][27]

According to the theory, positive emotions broaden a person’s momentary “thought-action repertoire.” When experiencing joy, interest, or contentment, the mind becomes more flexible, creative, and open to new possibilities. This broadened state leads to exploration, novel actions, new social connections, and creative problem-solving.[27][26]

Importantly, these broadened actions lead to the construction of enduring psychological resources. Exploring a new place builds navigational knowledge. Engaging socially with a stranger can blossom into friendship and social support. Physical play gradually becomes valued fitness. Over time, these resources accumulate and increase overall well-being. As one formulation puts it: “Resources build up over time and increase the individual’s overall well-being. This forms a positive cycle: increased well-being leads to more positive emotions which lead to higher resilience, which leads to increased well-being.”[26]

This means that leisure activities producing positive emotions have benefits far beyond the moment. A person who engages in social leisure activities (like dinner with friends, group sports, community involvement) doesn’t just enjoy the immediate experience; they build social support networks that buffer against future stress. Someone who pursues an absorbing hobby develops not just momentary pleasure but confidence, mastery, and a sense of purpose that sustains them through difficulties.[28]

Research confirms this mechanism. Studies find that engaging in multiple types of leisure activities – particularly social leisure – plays a role in “buffering the negative psychological impact of stress.” Individuals who have experienced significant stressful life events but who engage regularly in diverse leisure activities show “lower levels of negative moods and depression, and higher positive affect, life satisfaction, and engagement” compared to those with limited leisure engagement.[29]

Social leisure appears particularly powerful. One review notes: “Recent research suggests that social leisure activities may have stronger associations with depressive symptoms than exercise.” The mechanism appears twofold: social leisure directly benefits mental health through connection and belonging, and it also builds “time structure” – the sense of purposefully using one’s time, which is itself protective against depression.[30]

The Paradox of Choice: When Options Diminish Satisfaction

Yet for all the benefits of mindful, engaged, social leisure, modern life presents a paradoxical problem: too many options can actually reduce satisfaction and increase anxiety. This phenomenon, documented by psychologist Barry Schwartz, is known as “the paradox of choice.”[31][32]

Schwartz’s research reveals a counterintuitive finding: when faced with unlimited options, people become less satisfied with their choices and experience more regret. Why? The abundance of options has several psychological effects:[32][31]

First, every choice involves trade-offs. When choosing among many options, people tend to imagine the benefits of the unchosen alternatives rather than appreciating the benefits of their choice. If you choose to watch a specific streaming series, you are acutely aware of the dozens of other shows you’re not watching. This awareness creates a sense of missed opportunity.[32]

Second, increased choice leads to higher expectations. With so many options available, you expect to find the perfect choice – the show that will delight you, the vacation that will be flawless, the hobby that will prove ultimately satisfying. When the actual experience inevitably fails to meet these inflated expectations, disappointment follows.[31]

Third, blame and regret intensify. In a world of limited options, if your choice turns out poorly, you can blame circumstances. With unlimited options, you can only blame yourself – you failed to make the optimal choice from the many available. This self-blame creates negative emotions even after a reasonably good outcome, because you know a better option existed somewhere.[32]

The result is “choice paralysis” – the inability to choose from among overwhelming options, or the choice of nothing at all. People confronted with infinite streaming options sometimes watch nothing. Faced with countless restaurant choices, they feel anxious about missing the “best” option. Given unlimited vacation possibilities, they struggle to commit to any single trip.[33]

Schwartz argues that this is a genuine psychological problem of modern affluence. Paradoxically, the expansion of leisure options has not increased satisfaction; in many cases, it has decreased it, as people become overwhelmed, indecisive, and prone to regret.[33][31][32]

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Conclusion: Choosing Wisely

The Convergence of Wisdom Traditions

Across the four disciplines explored in this essay – history, philosophy, theology, and psychology – a remarkable convergence emerges. The ancient philosophers, medieval theologians, modern sociologists, and contemporary psychologists have arrived at surprisingly similar conclusions about leisure:

• First, leisure is not peripheral to human flourishing but central to it. Aristotle saw leisure as the space where virtue develops and eudaimonia is achieved. Augustine and Aquinas understood rest as essential to spiritual life. Csikszentmihalyi’s flow states represent the highest form of psychological engagement. All point to leisure as fundamental to becoming fully human.
• Second, leisure can be active or passive, ennobling or debasing. Not all free time is created equal. Contemplation and flow-producing activities develop human capacities and contribute to well-being in ways that passive consumption does not. The Preacher’s warning against hedonism, Veblen’s observation that conspicuous leisure can be mere status-seeking, and psychological research showing that passive entertainment provides only momentary pleasure while flow produces lasting satisfaction – all converge on this point.
• Third, leisure is never purely personal. Our leisure choices are shaped by social position (Veblen), shaped by what capacities we have had opportunity to develop (broaden-and-build theory), and contribute to reproducing social inequality (research on socioeconomic leisure gaps). The question “What do you enjoy doing in your leisure time?” cannot be answered without reference to history, culture, and social structure.
• Fourth, genuine leisure requires protection and intentionality. The Sabbath is not something that emerges naturally from exhaustion; it requires “strenuous act of will” and social support to practise it. Csikszentmihalyi notes that flow is rare precisely because modern life doesn’t naturally produce the conditions for it. The expansion of working hours during industrialisation wasn’t chosen by workers but imposed upon them. The pursuit of conspicuous leisure can become a compulsive trap. In each case, the wisdom traditions suggest that authentic leisure must be consciously chosen and actively protected against encroachment.[11]

The Contemporary Crisis of Leisure

Contemporary culture faces a profound crisis of leisure, though it rarely recognises it as such. On the surface, never have people had access to more leisure options: streaming services with millions of hours of content, social media providing constant amusement, online games offering infinite worlds, travel and experiences more accessible than ever. Yet satisfaction and well-being have not increased proportionally.

Several factors converge to create this crisis. First, the erosion of time itself. Despite labour-saving technologies, many people work longer hours than previous generations, with less secure employment and greater anxiety about their economic futures. The promise of industrialisation – that machines would free us for leisure – has been broken. Instead, the savings from automation have been captured as profit for capital owners, while the general population experiences intensified time pressure.[21][5]

Second, the quality of available leisure has degraded. As Veblen observed over a century ago, leisure became increasingly about status display and conspicuous consumption rather than human development. In the age of social media, this dynamic has intensified. Leisure must be Instagram-worthy, must signal our cultural taste and economic status, must be visibly consumed by an audience. This transforms leisure from something done for its own sake into a performance, another form of work.[16][18]

Third, the abundance of passive entertainment has crowded out more demanding but rewarding forms of leisure. Csikszentmihalyi’s research suggests that flow-producing activities require effort and skill development. But modern life offers infinite passive alternatives that require no effort, no development, no discomfort. The result is that many people experience leisure as a choice between passive consumption and nothing at all – between watching television and feeling they are wasting time.

Fourth, inequality in leisure has intensified. The research is clear: higher-income individuals engage in more active, enriching leisure while lower-income individuals rely more heavily on passive entertainment. This is not a matter of individual preference but of structural constraint. The expansion of leisure options is real – but access to enriching options remains highly stratified by wealth.[20][19]

Toward a Recovery of Leisure

Yet the convergence of wisdom traditions also suggests paths toward recovery. If leisure is central to human flourishing, and if we understand its conditions better through history, philosophy, theology, and psychology, we can make deliberate choices about how we spend our free time.

• First, we must reclaim leisure as an end in itself, not merely as recovery for work. This requires rejecting the notion that leisure’s value is instrumental – that its purpose is to make us more productive workers. Instead, we might ask: What capacities would I most like to develop? What pursuits absorb me completely? What activities make me feel most alive and engaged? These questions orient leisure toward flourishing rather than toward productivity.
• Second, we should be intentional about choosing active, skill-developing leisure over passive consumption. This is not to say that all entertainment is harmful. But Csikszentmihalyi’s research suggests that time spent in flow – whether in artistic creation, physical challenge, intellectual engagement, or social connection – produces deeper satisfaction than passive entertainment. Making even modest shifts toward more active leisure can significantly affect well-being.
• Third, we might protect leisure time as sacred, as the theological traditions suggest. This might mean establishing a personal sabbath – a regular period free from work demands and professional obligations. It means defending leisure time against the encroachment of work (email, messages, productivity concerns). It means recognising that rest is not laziness but a necessity, a right, and a declaration of freedom.
• Fourth, we should be alert to the ways status-seeking corrupts leisure. Veblen’s insights about conspicuous consumption remain vital. When we ask ourselves “Why do I want to do this leisure activity?” we might notice whether we’re pursuing it for its own sake or for the status it conveys. This doesn’t mean never choosing activities with social benefit – social leisure has particular mental health benefits. But it means recognising when leisure has become a performance and reclaiming the possibility of private, unseen leisure, done purely because it brings joy or develops capacities we care about.
• Fifth, we might recognise that the most meaningful leisure often involves social connection and community. The broaden-and-build theory emphasises that the strongest benefits come from social leisure. Furthermore, the theological traditions – from the Sabbath to Christian fellowship to the monastic community – suggest that leisure is best practised together, not in isolation. This counters modern individualism’s tendency to treat leisure as a private consumer choice. Perhaps genuine leisure requires community and shared practices.

The Deeper Question

The question “What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?” thus becomes a gateway to deeper reflection. It invites us to consider: What am I becoming through how I spend my free time? Am I developing my capacities or distracting myself from emptiness? Am I seeking status or genuine satisfaction? Am I connected to others or isolated in consumption? Am I protecting space for the highest human activities – contemplation, relationship, creation, growth – or allowing them to be crowded out by obligation and distraction?

Aristotle would have said that the answer to this question reveals a person’s conception of the good life. Augustine would have said it reveals whether we have found rest in God or are restlessly pursuing created things. Veblen would have asked whether our choices reflect authentic preference or social positioning. Csikszentmihalyi would have observed whether we experience flow or whether leisure remains a series of empty entertainments.

The convergence of these perspectives suggests that leisure is not trivial. It is the space in which, over time, we become who we are. To choose wisely about leisure is to choose wisely about life itself.

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Bob Lynn | © 2026 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.

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