Margin Room II

In America we live at such a fast pace and it can be hard to imagine a society could operate differently. It’s not just our imagination: Americans work longer hours than the rest of the world. Lawrence Jeff Johnson, a chief labor market economist, has proven “workers in the United States are putting in more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world.” However Johnson adds that “we're not the most efficient, when you compare it per hour.” It can be difficult to imagine a place where shops open at ten, close at six, and lunch breaks are long enough for social gatherings and naps. That’s right— naps. Not errands. Naps. In some Africa cultures social obligation to a visiting neighbor has priority over work (wrap your mind around the implications of that) and it is unthinkable to stop and ask a stranger any question, such as for directions or for the time, without inquiring after their family and life.

A life ordered in a way to allow margin space emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially and socially is a life that creates reserve tanks for when they are most needed. However the fact that I am arguing for our need of rest, by citing that it increases the functionality and fullness of life shows that I have not yet understood the role that rest and margin space should have. The point of rest is not to keep ourselves functional. Real rest is an acknowledgment that our worth does not lie in functionality. We do not merely rest from work and for work, but it is rather through rest that a person can step out of the working world to experience nourishment and transcendence. Leisure is the basis for culture, and as the author of that title wrote: “Leisure, it must be remembered, is not a Sunday afternoon idyll, but the preserve of freedom, of education and culture, and of that undiminished humanity which views the world as whole.”

It is in the margin space of life that relationships and thought, and art have space to unfold. I don’t know how to realistically seek rest within the culture I am immersed in, but I think that perhaps it may start by me giving permission to myself to have an identity based not in doing, but in being. This certainly needs to happen before I can invite others to slow down and simplify their lives. Since all that has ever been asked of us is who we will be today, for my part—today— I plan to live a life where neighbors and art matter, and the music drifting out of coffee shops is worth pausing to listen to. My hope for us all is that we would find margin space. May we learn to gather the daily manna of beauty without hoarding. And when we learn to release busyness, may we find in the end the life it promised but never reached.