On the Urgency of Leisure

There are few things more suspicious in modern society than a man at rest.

Try it, take an afternoon, on a weekday for better results, dress in linen, the kind that wrinkles with the careless you aspire to, and sit at a café with no laptop, no earphones, and, god forbid, no phone. Observe how pedestrians glance at you with alarm. Children tug at their mothers' skirts, and whisper horrified, “What is he doing? Why is he just sitting there?”

The answer, dear child, is both simple and alarming: because I can. Because humans, as it turns out, are capable of contemplation. Adults may faintly remember what that word means. Something they haven't heard in years, but its meaning still lingers somewhere in the back of their minds. The youngsters, poor things, raised on phones and tablets with Netflix, YouTube, and Instagram, might be mildly horrified by the idea of spending more than five minutes with their own thoughts.