Wednesday, July 6, 2011

In Praise of Idling

On Facebook today, my friend Julie posted this from "The Language of Work" by Mark Kingwell (Harper's, July 2011): "Genuine idling is never an evasion of work; it is instead, as Aristotle argued long ago, cultivation of the most divine element in us through the exercise of leisure: spirited but serious reflection on who we are and what we up to, free from the base demands of mere usefulness."

Maybe that's what I've been up to with my camera and all these bugs: idling like this walking stick, cultivating a new and improved view.

1 comment:

Joni said...

Robley, I love the quote! Not long ago, I found out about The Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World at Timberlake Farm
https://beholdnature.org/index.html

It's not far from where I live. It seems to cultivate idle time outdoors, and I'm hoping to take my daughter soon :-).