From Education to Initiation—Leisure as a Second Chance

Abstract

Leisure is an opportunity to do and learn things which, in instrumental life, we do not have the chance to do. Leisure should not remain merely ‘time off’, rather it can be used to change our whole lives into enlightening experiences, enriching and strengthening us. In free time, as in initiation, one has the opportunity to meet with himself. The experience itself is the realisation, and the realisation is not performance-oriented. Initiation is a process of accumulated understanding in which, as in leisure time, there may be no end product or ‘place’ we must reach. Initiation, like leisure, changes life into a ca talyst for continual learning. Free time is the space in which initiation takes place; it is a powerful process of further discovery, expanded growth and greater capacity to choose and judge alternatives, and take responsibility upon oneself. Hence, one becomes a ‘chooser’ of what is right for him according to the risks and responsibilities he takes upon himself. As long as one has still not met his uniqueness, he is likely to identify with someone or something. In initiation, no one person is like any other; it is up to each of us to discover this uniqueness.