I picked up Akshi Singh’s In Defence of Leisure on one of my leisurely afternoons browsing at Readings… that tells you I probably don’t ‘need’ the book but hey, who doesn’t like a little validation every now and then?

The premise of Singh’s book is that we all want more free time but don’t necessarily know how to use it. I think I’m pretty good at leisure time, and I’m never short of ideas on how to use it. What drew me to the book was the fact that Singh’s thoughts about leisure are explored in parallel with her reading of the works of celebrated psychoanalyst Marion Milner. I have never read any Milner, so In Defence of Leisure will perhaps prompt a Milner-reading-project.

In summary, Milner wrote nine books revealing how free time and creativity are vital for a fulfilled life (again, I need no convincing of this). In Milner’s words –

…leisure confronts us with the question of what we want, even in the most everyday iteration of what we might wish for from a free afternoon.

She emphasises that leisurely opportunity is ‘…to attend to something yet want nothing from it‘.

So how does this relate to Singh? She found herself at a crossroads in life – personally and professionally – as well as deeply grieving the death of her brother. The chance reading of one of Milner’s books lead Singh to realise that the questions and preoccupations Milner was exploring were her own, and resulted in Singh embarking on a quest to discover her true likes and dislikes.

I was immediately drawn into the initial chapters, memoir in style, describing Singh’s experience of grief, something that she said felt like a ‘burning shame’ –

My brother was twenty-four when he died, I was nineteen. With each passing year after his death, our shared time was pulled asunder. I grew older than my brother. I exchanged clocks and calendars for another measure of time – his absence. 

The book then moves into essay-style, with Milner’s work described in parallel to Singh’s experiences. These chapters weren’t as engaging for me, as they teetered between self-help/ instructional and detail about Singh’s new-found interests (gentle pursuits such as drawing). However, some of her insights resonated – she became aware that in her life, nothing was praised quite so much as sacrifice, and that it was easy to occupy a ‘position of waiting’.

Milner (and by default, Singh) makes the important distinction between self-care (and self improvement) and leisure.

Leisure is time when something can be discovered, where certainties are called into question, where lives change. It is not a commercially endorsed practice of consumption or escape, and certainly not the regimented forms of compliance that make up so much of what passes as self-care.

Singh reminds readers that ‘…leisure doesn’t need the justification of mastery’ and that it is important because it ‘…allows us the opportunity to be inexpert and incompetent.’ These are key concepts (and I suspect that fear of incompetency is what gets in the way of leisure time – see Tom Vanderbilt’s book, Beginners, for further reading).

So somewhere in allowing herself space, time to be ‘incompetent’, and exploring her grief, Singh emerges with a clearer understanding of what she needs and desires. I particularly liked her ultimate conclusion, that leisure needs to be considered in the everyday and ordinary, ‘…rather than presenting it as an exceptional experience.‘

3/5

I made a new friend. She invited me for a bike ride to the Walthamstow Marshes, and when we got there she opened a Tupperware box. Inside were mushroom and sour-cream puff-pastry rolls…