What do you do when you are relatively free to choose? How does such behavior affect your happiness, your health, your family, your friends, and society? Compared to a few decades ago, time free from paid work, household chores and personal maintenance is a larger and more important part of life.
Leisure in Your Life: New Perspectives takes a fresh approach to understanding leisure through the use of dozens of brief statements from diverse people commenting on some aspect of leisure in their lives. This device, combined with professionally designed PowerPoint presentations for each chapter, adds new perspectives to the approach taken to the previous editions of this best-selling book.
Designed to introduce leisure studies, this book encourages you to start by examining leisure as it relates to your life and then broaden your learning to include the rest of the world.
Nobody seems to know that I raised three kids, worked at the bank, headed the Easter Seal campaign for eight years, and bake a mean key lime pie. I'm "The Bird Lady." Bird watching just slowly took over my life during the last ten years. I think I know where almost every bird is in this county. Know their habits. Know how to get close to them. When I'm in the mall, sometimes someone I don't even know comes up and says: "Oh, you're The Bird Lady." I am.
In high school I had a dream that all the seniors in my class were lined up on a starting line to race. Some knew they were faster or slower than others. What they did not know is that each had an invisible, undetectable rope tied to one leg. The ropes were of different lengths. Some were very short. Others were hundreds of miles long. At the gun they began to run a race with each other. Some of the runners, sometimes those who were apparently faster, were almost immediately jerked to a halt and fell flat on their faces. Others kept running or walking, aware now that a few had fallen. Still others, seeing that people had fallen, stopped running for a minute to consider whether such racing was worthwhile or whether to go back to help. A few did. Even after all these years I can recall this image, can sense the ropes tied to people's legs. So far, I have kept running — but I know about the rope.
I'm in the airport and people are eating food while sitting by boarding gates. They are also talking on cell phones. They are also reading. I go into the restroom. There are people talking on cell phones in the toilets. There are people brushing their teeth. There are people text messaging. I walk back out. There are people shopping, drinking while talking on the phone and ordering from a menu and talking to the bartender while trying to keep an eye on their carry-on bags. There is only one person in the whole airport who seems to be doing nothing — and he looks depressed. Oh, most of these people are going on vacation!
Instructors' materials available upon request.
Acknowledgments, About the Author
Chapter 1 Leisure, Recreation, Play, and Flow
Chapter 2 Leisure: Past and Present
Chapter 3 What We Do with Our Time: The Rhythm of Daily Life
Chapter 4 Getting Involved:From Killing Time to Central Life Purpose
Chapter 5 Work and Leisure and Work and Leisure
Chapter 6 Spending Money for Leisure: The Best Things in Life Are Free (or Fee)
Chapter 7 Holy Days, Holidays, and Celebrations
Chapter 8 Leisure Throughout the Cycle of Life
Chapter 9 Traveling to Leisure — Traveling as Leisure
Chapter 10 Leisure and Sexuality
Chapter 11 Leisure and Education
Chapter 12 Leisure and Healthy Lives
Chapter 13 Healthy Leisure — Celebrating Life
Chapter 14 Leisure Service Organizations
Chapter 15 The Future of Leisure
Index
