ABSTRACT
In common vernacular, work and leisure are framed as polar opposites: what is work cannot be leisure. Indeed, leisure is often construed as the ‘left-over time’ – time not spent at work, or on other obligations, time for doing anything … or nothing. By contrast, we will argue and offer various forms of evidence for a very different appreciation of work and leisure. In our view, leisure is the primary source of activity, inquiry, freedom, and love, while work is a secondary derivative, but one that can be chosen voluntarily and done in a leisurely fashion (e.g., to offer some obvious examples, piano playing, writing, video-game testing, experiential mathematics, etc.). Thus, in our view, work and leisure intertwine with one another and sometimes lose their boundaries altogether, more like the Yin-Yang symbol with mirror-opposite black and white embryos, each pregnant with its emergent other.
