Chapter 11
Speech to the North Dakota Recreational Conference
Making Use of Our Leisure Time
I want to state my definition of social living. It is this: social living is a method of living in which performance of the necessary tasks leaves strength, time and inclination for all to have, enjoy, and profit by leisure.
While on the subject of definitions we might as well have one for leisure. Leisure is or should be the opportunity to exercise one's highest talents and faculties. I think myself that happiness in this world consists pretty largely in the exercise of one's highest faculties. I suppose the happiest person in the world is the one who spends his time and earns his money through the exercise of his or her highest talents. If a person is musical, I think he will not attain real happiness in this world unless he has an opportunity for expression in a musical way. If a person's highest faculty is writing, painting, or modelling, he will hardly be happy unless there is opportunity for the exercise of that skill. If a person has acting ability he should have a chance to give it outlet. A person whose talent lies in organization will probably not be happy unless he is organizing something whether it be a community play production unit or political party. If a man's talent is public speaking he would hardly be happy unless he is engaged in work where speaking is necessary.
Some people can earn their living by the exercise of their highest faculties, but I imagine that for most of us the exercise of these highest faculties has to be provided for in our non-working time in the form of play.
While on the subject of definitions, let us define play. I define it as the business of childhood, the vocation of youth, and the avocation of adulthood.
Assuming now that we agree as to what social living is and as to what leisure is, let us consider some of the methods of utilizing leisure. All of them can be placed under one of three groups:
- the collecting things group,
- the growing things group,
- the creating things group.
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In the collecting things group one might consider stamps, leaves, flowers and weeds, butterflies, rocks, birds' nests, scenes (by means of the camera) and at least a hundred and one other possibilities. I know a chap who takes a great deal of delight in saving match box covers. Perhaps not a very brilliant form of collection, but he has a good deal of fun out of it.
My own hobby is the collection of leaves and twigs. I have leaves from a great many of the trees growing near our national shrines and there are very few species of American trees whose leaves I have not in my possession. The saving of twigs is a delight because so few people ever think of saving twigs. The twigs are particularly interesting because they hold the leaf scars and the leaf scars are the Bertillon system of the trees. Did you ever stop to think that each leaf leaves its tiny finger print on the twig and if you are an expert in this Bertillon system of trees, you do not have to worry about leaves or barks or fruit or anything else. The leaf scar is an absolute method of identification.
I know a friend who saves rocks. So many of them in fact, that the landlord is worried for fear the floor will not hold.
When I was at Harvard, the football teams were directed by Percy Haughton. It was one of the most famous football regimes of all time. It included such players as Wendel, Brickley and Felton. After Haughton departed Harvard had a long period of only fair success on the football team. The old Harvard fight weeks, instituted by Haughton were no longer popular and perhaps there was greater sanity in the football department. I know there were fewer victories. But I am predicting a renewed success for the Harvard football teams for the reason that Mr. A.H. Harlow, who will be coach this fall, is very much of a "he man." The proof is that he is one of the best collectors of birds' nests in the east and as a matter of fact, has been appointed in charge of Harvard's bird nest collection, without pay of course. I am betting on any team that has a coach like this.
Of course, collecting is not the highest type of leisure utilization. But it leads into so many other things that I think it is something we cannot overlook.
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The next division is the growing things group. I don't know of any happier people than those who grow flowers and shrubs. Perhaps less ethereal but equally interesting is the raising of animals. I don't care whether it's canaries or Belgian hares, or insects. I had a good deal of fun in raising Tommie. His zoological name was Heliothus armiger, or tomato fruit worm. His species bores into tomatoes with great relish causing them to rot so I called my pet Tommy-rot, or Tommie for short. He was a very dangerous pet because he causes nearly $100,000,000 damage to farmers of the U.S. every year. I had Tommie for about four weeks but one day when I came home he had disappeared. I don't know whether the janitor's wife made way with him or not. Perhaps he just got tired of me and absconded. But I will never forget the fun I had with Tommie.
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The third group is perhaps the most interesting of all I believe—the creating things group. There are innumerable things to be created physically and mentally. One might mention the use of wood in the form of furniture making, chip carving, whittling; modeling, clay and soap; textiles weaving, tie and batik; building, garden pools, small dams, even rammed earth houses; painting, all the way from decoration of dishes to oil paintings; poetry and music.
One of the simplest types of leisure utilization is the creation of poetry. The equipment needed is not difficult. It consists of only three things—a piece of paper, a pencil, and an emotion.
"But," you say, "we have had so many verses about the roses and the moonlight that we are tired of them."
Let us look at it from another standpoint. Poetry is nothing if it is not a vehicle for the expression of new experience. When each of us discovers for himself or herself the beauty of the rose, we should set down your reactions in some way or form. Why should we fail to write a poem about it just because a thousand others have? It is our first experience and that is the important thing. And the same holds with moonlight and trees, and skies and sunsets—and love.
Summing up, let me say that I believe we will never go back to a time when most of the waking hours are devoted to the actual necessary tasks upon which mere existence depends. We are going to have to go back and regain the glorious part of handicraft that was stripped from us by the industrial age.
More of us need to become artisans. More of us need to become artists. Let us be creators of, searchers for, or at least appreciators of beauty. It is an easy step from appreciation of nature to the appreciation of art. I think that you hold in your hands and minds the key to more problems of our national welfare than you ever suspect.
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