Character in Leisure

1. Cultivating a Healthy Social Life and a Fruitful use of Free Time Character in Leisure

2. We all want to be happy. (You cannot not want to be happy.)

3. …happiness, …we choose always for itself and never for the sake of something else, Aristotle 384 BC – 322 BC Greek philosopher

4. 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.

5. 2. The greatest happiness is to love and to be loved. To mean everything to someone.

6. 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 1997 nun, founder of the Missionaries of Charity

7. 3. We thus naturally try to make ourselves lovable. 4. Either through our personality or our propriety/performance.

8. 5. Personality = character = virtue.

9. Character is simply the integration, into one personality, of several fundamental strengths of mind and will. James Stenson ? writer and educational consultant

10. These are internalized, habitual, permanent habits and attitudes by which someone deals with life, in all its circumstances.

13. … Character is what you have left over if you go broke… James Stenson ? writer and educational consultant

15. [being vs. having] The most important things in life are people. Clifford C. Oluoch b. 1967 teacher & author

16. 6.Allthe virtues. Intellectual, moral and physical.

17. We have reduced all virtues to one: being nice. Scott Hahn b. 28th Oct 1957 author, theologian, and Catholic apologist

18. [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? Peter Kreeft b. 1938/1939 professor of philosophy, author

19. 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…”

20. But being a niceperson 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.

21. [what is wrong with the world?] Dear Sirs: I am. Sincerely yours, G.K. Chesterton G. K. Chesterton 1874-1936 English writer

23. 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 2001 philosopher, educator, and popular author

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

25. …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…

26. …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.

27. 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.

28. 7. What do we observe instead? • Superficiality • Impurity • Intemperance • Pride • Insincerity • Clique mentality

29. 8. Superficiality • In conversation • In work/chores, study • In hobbies • In sports • In doctrine

30. 9. Impurity • DVDs, series, internet • Music videos • Discos, parties, hang out joints • Pornography and masturbation • “Making out”

31. 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. 1946 mother, activist and author

32. 10. Intemperance • Drink • Drugs • Sleep • Food • Entertainment

33. 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 ...

34. 12.Insincerity 13. Clique mentality / peer pressure

35. [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 1902-1975 priest, civil lawyer, canon lawyer, Founder of Opus Dei

36. …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.

37. 8. How do we remedy these? Fruitful use of free time.

38. 8. Specifically? • Give them a challenge. • Demand higher standards from them and from yourselves.

39. Music and dance. • Sports and games. • Architecture, sculpture, drawing, painting. • Languages. • Theatre and drama. • Books and encyclopaedias. • Mechanics and electronics.

40. Cooking, baking and mixing. • Outdoor visits and excursions. • Philosophy and astronomy.

41. The End ram@strathmore.ac.ke