on the blog
A Mom's Meaningful Cultural Work
reading time: 5 minutes
Our work in the home looks hidden. Much of it only we see. It is overlooked and invisible even too those who live with us, who benefit from the work. Therefore, it’s tempting to look at the chores to be done and think, “No one will even notice if I get another day behind on the laundry. No one will even notice if I shine the sink. No one will even notice if I clean out the fridge or not.” And then it’s just a short hop to, “So why should I?”
The world today is not short on conveniences, on technological wonders, on methods for instant gratification of nearly every whim. The world is short on meaning, and those two trends are intimately tied. When your own hard work is required for yourself and others to survive, you don’t struggle with meaning. This is why, historically, cultures operating at the thin edge of subsistence don’t produce art, free governments, or philosophers.
Indeed, leisure is the basis of culture, as Josef Pieper’s little book reminds us. A society must have enough food and goods for at least some of the population to think beyond today’s needs, to expend energy not on survival but on beauty and justice and truth. It is basic economics. Leisure isn’t laziness. Leisure is the attention and energy of your mind being directed to higher things beyond survival. As my husband likes to tease me, “Your leisure sounds a lot like work to me.” It’s true. It is. It’s just work of a different kind.
Today in the West it is almost as if we have come full circle on that economic necessity. We have so much cultural wealth and luxury, so much beyond bare substance, that we are numbed to work itself and therefore have neither satisfaction in necessary work nor in contemplative leisure. Both seem beyond our reach as our needs are easily met and our minds are easily distracted. What is left? Numbness. Thoughtlessness. Meaninglessness.
Psychotropic prescriptions and psychoactive self-medicating abound in alarming numbers. It’s no wonder.Our work in the home looks hidden. Much of it only we see. It is overlooked and invisible even too those who live with us, who benefit from the work. Therefore, it’s tempting to look at the chores to be done and think, “No one will even notice if I get another day behind on the laundry. No one will even notice if I shine the sink. No one will even notice if I clean out the fridge or not.” And then it’s just a short hop to, “So why should I?”
The world today is not short on conveniences, on technological wonders, on methods for instant gratification of nearly every whim. The world *is* short on meaning, and those two trends are intimately tied. When your own hard work is required for yourself and others to survive, you don’t struggle with meaning. This is why, historically, cultures operating at the thin edge of subsistence don’t produce art, free governments, or philosophers.
Indeed, leisure is the basis of culture, as Josef Pieper’s little book reminds us. A society must have enough food and goods for at least some of the population to think beyond today’s needs, to expend energy not on survival but on beauty and justice and truth. It is basic economics. Leisure isn’t laziness. Leisure is the attention and energy of your mind being directed to higher things beyond survival. As my husband likes to tease me, “Your leisure sounds a lot like work to me.” It’s true. It is. It’s just work of a different kind.
Today in the West it is almost as if we have come full circle on that economic necessity. We have so much cultural wealth and luxury, so much beyond bare substance, that we are numbed to work itself and therefore have neither satisfaction in necessary work nor in contemplative leisure. Both seem beyond our reach as our needs are easily met and our minds are easily distracted. What is left? Numbness. Thoughtlessness. Meaninglessness. Psychotropic prescriptions and psychoactive self-medicating abound in alarming numbers. It’s no wonder.
The 4-Part Planning Method: Joyful Productivity
Without Burnout
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Mystie
Repent. Rejoice. Repeat.
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