When Your Time Is Not Your Own: The Surprising Benefits Of Limited Leisure
Photo by Elina Fairytale from Pexels
“Leisure is not the privilege of those who have time, but rather the virtue of those who give each instant of life the time it deserves.”
-Brother David Steindl-Rast
As a mother to three children under six, I have a lot of demands on my time. Even as I write, I hear a timid, “Hello?” echoing down the hall from a little voice, up from a nap and looking for mommy.
It’s easy to grow resentful of the stop-and-start, interruption-laden life I lead. I often ache for less demands, less hurry. I’d rather spend my time laying in the grass and reading poetry than carrying the weight of so many relentless obligations.
What’s worse, the modern world provides a steady stream of encouragement to pursue your own passions, be your own boss, and then retire early. This is declared as superior to things like working for someone else, caretaking, or a long day of shift-work. This value system is reflected in both the pay and prestige we assign to various kinds of work.
We live under the shadow of a cultural narrative glorifying the self-made, autonomous woman on the path to achieving self-actualization and as such, with little time for things like duty or moral obligation — you won’t find those words adorning any Instagram profiles these days.
But I recently read Domestic Monastery by Ronald Rolheiser, and found a counter-cultural answer to the questions of how best to spend one’s time. In it, he compares the domestic life of caretaking and seclusion to that of the monastic life — a breeding ground for spiritual growth. One such opportunity for growth comes from living the kind of life where time is not your own.
In monasteries, monks are often summoned throughout the day by a “monastic bell”, a bell that rings periodically, signaling the mandatory movement from one activity to the next. If a monk is writing when the bell rings, for example, he must put the pen down mid-word and move on.
This resonated deeply with me for obvious reasons. Rolheiser ponders why we assume we’re all worse off for having been told how to spend our time all day. He writes, “...recognizing in our duties and pressures the sound of the monastic bell actually helps us to smell the flowers, to give each instant of our lives the time it deserves — and not necessarily the time I feel like giving it. We are better for the demands that the duties of our state in life put on us, despite constant fatigue. Conversely, the privileged who have all the time in the world are worse off for that, despite their constant opportunity to smell the flowers. These are monastic secrets worth knowing.”
It struck me that these words describe the practical outworking of what happens when I give my life away for others: I find it. This is what it looks like. This is what it feels like… sometimes, like constant fatigue.
But Rolheiser argues this is actually better than having all the time in the world to yourself. It’s easy to resent living this way because it feels as if you’re living it in the opposite direction of everyone else, which of course, you are. Living to give your life in service to others is counter-cultural to the core.
But what if we began to make peace with that? What if we accepted that giving our lives away will never be glamorous, or trendy, or loudly affirmed but instead meaningful, worthy, and deeply beneficial?
One day we might even come to understand that the demands on our time are actually a gift, and that learning there’s a time for everything helps us enjoy all of it more.
May you begin today to see the demands on your time, as relentless as they might be, as part of your spiritual practice. As a refining work in your life bringing you more in touch with the reality of what each instant truly deserves.
