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Balancing Work and Leisure

We are created for both work and leisure. Work stimulates our mind, engages our body, energizes our creativity, and helps us make an impact on the world in which we live. Work is a gift for the soul. Without work our soul is listless and stumbles about the cobblestones of life, uncertain and empty.

But leisure is as important to our human existence as work. Work without leisure steals our joy and strips us of our desire to create. Leisure is the necessary counterpart to work. It wakes us up again to the movement of life. New images poke cheerily into our soul and in those new creations we are re-created.

There’s no need to postpone enjoying the gift of leisure until you can travel to white sandy beaches studded with coconut palms. Expose yourself every day to the movement of creation, and you’ll find that the tasks that had lost their joy and felt like drudgery, surprisingly, have been infused with new hope and possibility. You might finally admit that plopping down in front of the TV after work no longer leaves you feeling relaxed. Instead, you might decide to give as much attention to your leisure as to your work, and thereby allow your soul to be captivated and re-charged. You might just find that at work you create meaning, and when you are at leisure, meaning is created in you.

Tip to try:
For the next week, give yourself one hour of leisure every day and experience your leisure differently each day. Try things like taking a walk, sitting in a park, feeding the ducks, reading a book, hiking a mountain, writing a poem, having coffee with a friend, taking 27 photographs with a disposable camera, learning a new language, reading a travel magazine and planning a trip, or, or, or…

Copyright ©2007 Renée Miller