cultivating a healthy social life and a fruitful use of free time

CHARACTER IN LEISURE

Cultivating a Healthy Social Life and a Fruitful use of Free Time

1. We all want to be happy.

(You cannot not want to be happy.)

…happiness, …we choose always for itself and never for

the sake of something else,

Aristotle384 BC – 322 BC

Greek philosopher

but honour, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for themselves (for if nothing resulted from them we should still choose each of them), but we choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that through them we shall be happy. Happiness, on the other hand, no one chooses for the sake of these, nor, in general, for anything other than itself.

2. The greatest happiness is to love and to be loved.

To mean everything to someone.

I have come more and more to realise

that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever

experience.Mother Teresa

26 Aug 1910 – 5 Sep 1997nun, founder of the

Missionaries of Charity

3. We thus naturally try to make ourselves lovable.

4. Either through our personality or our propriety/performance.

5. Personality = character = virtue.

Character is simply the integration, into one personality, of

several fundamental strengths of mind

and will.

James Stenson?

writer and educational consultant

These are internalized, habitual, permanent habits and attitudes by

which someone deals with life, in all its circumstances.

… Character is what you have left over if

you go broke…

James Stenson?

writer and educational consultant

Clifford C. Oluochb. 1967

teacher & author

[being vs. having] The most important

things in life are people.

6. All the virtues.

Intellectual, moral and physical.

We have reduced all virtues to one:

being nice.

Scott Hahnb. 28th Oct 1957

author, theologian, and Catholic apologist

Peter Kreeftb. 1938/1939

professor of philosophy, author

[nice] Most people we

know in our society are not immoral but amoral. How many people do you know

who deliberately choose evil rather than good, as the

habitual pattern of their lives?

Probably few or none. I know there is an alarming and increasing number of

drug dealers, wife-beaters, child-molesters, pimps, and rapists. But

most of the people most of us know are “nice” people. Indeed, that

adjective is almost always the one we use: “Oh, he’s a nice person…”

But being a nice person is not necessarily the same as being a good person, a moral person. To be nice

means only to be socially acceptable. The opposite of “nice” is “nasty.” But being good means much more than

just not being nasty.

[what is wrong with the world?]

Dear Sirs:I am.

Sincerely yours,

G.K. Chesterton

G. K. Chesterton1874-1936

English writer

Like so many people today, you speak of "leisure time" when what you really mean is free time – time free from the work you have to do to earn a living. Mortimer Adler

28th Dec 1902 – 28th Jun 2001philosopher, educator, and

popular author

Free for what? Leisure is one answer to that question, but most Americans today who give that answer mean play, amusement, recreation, even sleep.

…Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of serious activity in which men can engage. One is labor, toil, or business – the kind of work which produces wealth and earns a man's subsistence. The other he refers to as 'leisure activities“ – the kind of work which produces not the goods of the body, not the comforts and…

…conveniences of life, but the goods of the spirit or of civilization. These include all the liberal arts and sciences, and all the institutions of the state and of religion …those virtuous activities by which a man grows morally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is that which makes a life worth living.

Like labor, toil, or business, leisure is hard work, in the sense of a tiring activity. Men need play or recreation to remove the fatigues of leisure as much as they do to refresh them from toil.

7. What do we observe instead?

- Superficiality- Impurity

- Intemperance- Pride

- Insincerity- Clique mentality

8. Superficiality

- In conversation- In work/chores, study

- In hobbies- In sports

- In doctrine

9. Impurity

- DVDs, series, internet- Music videos

- Discos, parties, hang out joints

- Pornography and masturbation- “Making out”

Many times, parents allow persons into

their home through television that they would never let in through the front

door.Victoria D. M. Gillick

b. 1946mother, activist and author

10. Intemperance

- Drink- Drugs- Sleep- Food

- Entertainment

11. Pride- Always wanting to get their own way;- Arguing when they are not right or -

when they are - insisting stubbornly or with bad manners;

- Making excuses when rebuked;- Refusing to carry out menial tasks;

- Being ashamed of not having certain possessions ...

12. Insincerity

13. Clique mentality / peer pressure

[your own environment] 'There's no denying

the influence of environment', you've told me. And I have to answer: Quite.

That is why you have to be formed… St. Josemaria Escriva

1902-1975priest, civil lawyer, canon

lawyer, Founder of Opus Dei

…in such a way that you can carry your own environment about with you in a natural manner, and so give your own 'tone' to the society in which you live.

8. How do we remedy these?

Fruitful use of free time.

8. Specifically?

- Give them a challenge.

- Demand higher standards from them and from yourselves.

- Music and dance.- Sports and games.

- Architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting.

- Languages.- Theatre and drama.

- Books and encyclopaedias.- Mechanics and electronics.

- Cooking, baking and mixing.- Outdoor visits and excursions.

- Philosophy and astronomy.

The End

ram@strathmore.ac.ke