The Importance of Leisure

During his final three terms as Prime Minister from 1880 to the early 1890s, Gladstone was in the woods inspecting or chopping more than 300 times. As society advanced and jobs became increasingly less physical, but more exhausting mentally and spiritually, it became common for leisure to include a diverse array of activities such as reading,. John Cage observed that traipsing through the woods opened up the mind and encouraged ideas to fly into one's head like birds. Fred Rogers had his swimming, St. Teresa of Avila loved to dance, and so did May Carol Jemison, the first African American woman in space.