Denuncie Latrata

One of the greatest blessings of our modern technology, our economic system, our productivity, is the new leisure they have given our people. Golden hours of one’s own have been added to each day, days to each week, years to each lifetime. But the ironic, even tragic, part of this boon to good living is that few have learned how to use this new leisure. People are uneasy even when they try to relax. The quality that were indispensable in creating our standard of living become a formidable handicap when he seeks to enjoy their hard-won leisure.

Communication, with which the modern man is obsessed, kills the art of communion by which man is enriched and ennobled. Communication starts by being an aid, a convenience. It grows, grows, grows like a tree if you like it, and like a cancer if you don’t. In any case, it ends as a way of life. The transmission and reception of messages, almost irrespective of meaning, becomes an activity fascinating in itself. It can be quite satisfying, though never fulfilling, to certain temperaments that are outgoing, social, manipulative, present-minded. But it yields its last measure of satisfaction only if pushed to its last degree of development. This involves an assault on privacy or, rather, a common, unconscious willingness to be assaulted.

We must learn to use the leisure with which we are already blessed. And we must make a colossal, untiring effort to introduce more and more holy repose into our lives.