Engagement and Disengagement

Abstract

In an age of anxiety, detachment seems an inappropriate art, and activity a solution. But wisdom and perspective—so commonly, though conceivably erroneously, attributed to the elders—require a base in leisure. By the term leisure I do not mean the common American association to recreation, that is, the utilization of leisure in particular activities. I refer, rather, to the root definitions of leisure as given in Webster’s New International Dictionary, definition 2, “freedom or opportunity afforded by exemption from occupation or business” and, particularly, to definition 3, “time at one’s command, free from engagement.” The crucial ideas here are contained in definition 3, and they suggest two important concepts. The first, “time at one’s command,” I take to mean that the individual is able to structure time as he chooses, or can ignore time altogether, since it is he who commands it, rather than time that commands him. The second idea, “free from engagement,” implies a possible logic for that kind of choice, that is, that the individual is free from the sense of being engaged by various outer events or objects. Thus when the individual is not bound, i.e., not engaged with events and objects, time alters its relationship to the individual, and the individual alters his view of the importance of being engaged.