THE IMPORTANCE OF LOAFING

Lin Yutang

"Oh wise humanity, terribly wise humanity!

Of thee I sing.
How inscrutable is the civilization where 
men toil and work and worry their hair gray 
to get a living and forget to play"

As readers of my previous posting on Henry Miller will recognize, I am attracted to writers who bravely challenge conventional wisdom and offer unique perspectives on issues related to the quality of our lives.  Another writer that falls within this category is the Chinese scholar and philosopher, Lin Yutang, who wrote forty books in English, including the 1937 classic, The Importance of Living.

One of the fascinating subjects addressed in The Importance of Living is the value of loafing and how that value is being eroded by western civilization's ever-growing obsession with work.  From a western perspective, this may seem a bit odd.  Why, one might ask, would a successful author, scholar, translator, and philosopher question the western work ethic and extol the virtues of loafing?  The answer lies the inability of many westerners to appreciate the virtues of loafing, idleness, and other forms of leisure that place more importance on being than on doing or possessing.

In advanced western countries, especially America, we are seemingly obsessed with work, not just the work that is required to provide our daily bread, but work that, according to Yutang, is driven by "duties, responsibilities, fears, inhibitions and ambitions."  It is work "born not of nature, but of human society."  We are also obsessed with the process of constantly trying to improve things, our expectations being that improvement will eventually lead to perfection, and that perfection, in turn, will lead to greater happiness. We have mastered the noble art of getting things done, but we have remained oblivious to what Yutang calls "the nobler art of leaving things undone."

This constant drumbeat of work-work-work leaves little or no time for loafing, but  that  is of little concern to most Americans because "loafing," unlike "work," does not fall within the our definition of a "productive life;" nor is it considered to be a path to wisdom or a source of creativity.  To the contrary, loafing is usually regarded as unproductive behavior that merits discouragement, rather than encouragement.  On a personal level, I have found that many Americans, if not most, are uncomfortable with the prospect of being seen "loafing around doing nothing," and once discovered in that mode, the individual is likely to be somewhat embarrassed and proffer an apology.

The Asian concept of loafing is quite different from that employed by western countries.  Loafing is considered to be productive, not unproductive, because it is the bedrock from which culture, including all wisdom and art, is produced.  Again, listen to what Yutang has to say:

Culture . . . is essentially a product of leisure. The art of culture is therefore essentially the art of loafing.  From the Chinese point of view, the man who is wisely idle is the most cultured man. For there seems to be a philosophic contradiction between being busy and being wise. Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.  The wisest man is therefore he who loafs most gracefully.

Although loafing is often treated by westerners as an inferior use on one's mind, it  has been regarded in China as an achievement of high-mindedness.  "This highmindenness," according to Yutang, "came from, and was inevitably associated with, a certain sense of detachment toward the drama of life; it came from the quality of being able to see through life's ambitions and follies and the temptations of fame and wealth."

Yutang was not opposed to to meaningful work; nor was he opposed to the idea of progress.  The point that he was making is simply that neither work nor progress should deprive humanity of "the divine desire for loafing," time to create, time to experience the world in all of its glory, time to be fully human.  Again, Yutang:

There is always plenty of life to enjoy for a man who is determined to enjoy it. If men fail to enjoy this earthly existence we have, it is because they do not love life sufficiently and allow it to be turned into a humdrum routine existence.  Laotse has been wrongly accused of being hostile to life; on the other hand, I think he taught the renunciation of the life of the world exactly because he loved life all too tenderly, to allow the art of living to degenerate into the mere business of living.

Let us all hope that we can find the proper balance in life -- to do meaningful work, for sure, but to also reserve time for loafing, time for each person to meet himself or herself face to face, time to experience the natural world in all of its splendor and glory.