Wordsworth had correctly said that getting and spending we lay waste our power. We have, virtually, no time to enjoy the beauty of nature, spend carefree moments with friends or relatives and spare from our busy routine some time for leisure.
This makes a poet bemoan:
What is this life, if full of care,
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We have no time to stand and stare?
Caught as we are in a rat-race in this highly competitive, capitalist society, it is all the more essential to get out of it for at least an hour or so and do something quite different from the daily grind of life. Leisure provides rest and relaxation.
To turn one’s mind to something else, that one enjoys doing, is a happy end to a day’s hard work. It provides you with an opportunity to get rid of the tensions and pressures at your place of work and make you feel relaxed.
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There are different ways of deriving leisure. You can engage in a hobby of your choice, such as reading, gardening, stamp-collecting, photography, social work or anything else. The pursuance of a hobby, like reading, enlightens the mind, since it has always to offer something new. Reading broadens the outlook and often shows us the side of life that we have not been exposed to.
Gardening not only helps you to exert yourself physically, but teaches you to appreciate the unique colours of nature. Stamp-collecting arouses your interest in different countries and teaches you a lot about them. Photography enables you to be creative and social work gives immense satisfaction, as you help another man to improve his life.
So we can rightly say that every hobby provides a welcome relief from work. It is the only hour of the day, when you can do what you have always wanted to do, but never found time to do it in your busy life. In fact, even cleaning up the cupboard, which you have not done for a long time, can often be found quite interesting.
You come across objects which you had considered lost and forgotten. Those objects might be linked to pleasant or unpleasant experiences, transforming you back into the memory lane, which itself are a pleasurable experience.
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Another, usually, long-neglected occupation, one can engage in, is writing letters to people who have either written to you or are waiting for your response. This helps revive links, apart from giving you an occasion to spend your leisure time profitably.
Another easy way to relax is to go out of the house, do window-shopping, or merely walk in a park and watch the children at play. Anything that is different from the daily routine and that you enjoy doing is a good way of spending your leisure hours. Leisure, undoubtedly, is an invaluable, ideal tonic that provides solace, joy and happiness to the mind as well as body.