A six-hour flight is a fascinating case study of human habits, particularly with regard to how leisure fares amid the endless distraction that plagues our culture. The devolution of leisure into time-wasting is apparent everywhere: enter any public place and observe how people walk the streets with eyes glued to smartphones, scrolling whether they are alone or with others. But the airplane is a unique place from which to observe leisure in action. With the exception of a handful of busy business executives, most people on a plane have nothing they have to do. Everyone has hours of free time. Plus, everyone is sitting in orderly rows facing the same direction: the lack of privacy means the way each passenger uses his time is open to public scrutiny.
What did this observer observe? A vast majority of people waste their time in (sometimes objectively bad, sometimes neutral but wasteful) idleness. And this idleness is not even particularly focused on one source of entertainment/distraction: many people seem unable to concentrate on anything for extended periods of time.
To be fair, we live in a profoundly distracting world. Screens flash, speakers boom, sights and sounds constantly demand our attention. Sit down on an airplane and both your phone and the booklet in the seat pocket promise “Wi-Fi and Free Entertainment,” hundreds of your favorite shows and movies, the ability to stare at your phone for the entirety of your trip. Even someone consciously seeking virtuous habits must struggle vigorously in this life against the temptation to watch endless videos and scroll never-ending feeds.
Many people give into these cultural temptations and waste an incredible amount of time. And some of the material on which that time is wasted is downright bad. I had to avert my eyes several times from the screens of my fellow passengers, observing unwanted glimpses of rape, grisly violence and murder, demonic ritual, and more. The fact that such content is available at all—not to mention on a public plane where it assaults the eyes of many passengers, including children—is awful and should be socially unacceptable. Even if explicit scenes are not purely gratuitous and arguably have some artistic value, there is a reason certain subjects like sex and killing were labeled obscene (possibly from the Greek “ob skene” or off-stage): there are things that should never be viewed because they are bad for the soul. Yet such things are available on the screens that occupy nearly every modern pocket.
But beyond content which is evil, there is plenty that is morally neutral. Comedies, tragedies, feel-good love stories, and action thrillers. We can watch a bunch of silly officemates banter or a first-rate spy hunt down the bad guys. Countless hours of content on every conceivable genre and topic are available for consumption in movies and television shows. When does it become immoral or evil to consume such things? How much moderation is required? How much viewing is too much? These are not bad questions, but they miss the most important point: when man is not working, he should be engaged in leisure. And leisure is not idleness. Leisure involves doing that which is good because it is good to do. So the question is not whether all these distractions are objectively bad. The question is whether they are a good use of our time.
Recently, I gave a lecture on St. Thomas More, focusing on the reality that how we use our free time might be the difference between a professionally successful but ultimately mediocre life and the life of a saint. Afterwards, a man came up to me who was exactly the listener I had in mind: a successful man who runs his own business and spends most of his free time watching sports (or, according to his wife, scrolling on his phone while the sports play on the television screen in the background). He said “you know, I have a lot of ideas that I think are pretty good. I probably could have turned some of them into books by now if I didn’t spend so much time on my screens.” Exactly right. But the point is not simply that this man could have been a published author rather than a football aficionado. The point is he could be living a happier, holier life if he spent his time better.
Time spent binge-watching the next television series, scrolling social media feeds, or following the non-stop coverage of the daily news may not be objectively evil. But it is time that God has given us. Is this really the best way to use it? Shouldn’t the time we waste be spent in prayer and spiritual reading, in study and writing, in phone-free conversations and leisure with our loved ones? If we got a grip on the way we spend our time, how different would our lives, our communities, our world look? This problem can hardly be overstated: God has given us a limited amount of time on this earth, and many of us spend it quite poorly. I would guess that the devil takes great delight in the number of souls flitting away their time on earth absorbed in smartphones, iPads, and flatscreen TVs.
Another troubling aspect of this tech-addicted, time-wasting culture is that people are losing the ability to even concentrate on their chosen distractions. On my flight, I observed something even more concerning than the time-wasting: many people started a movie, then changed to another movie after a few minutes, then did it again. Others lost interest in their shows and checked their text messages every couple of minutes. The man across the aisle from me kept watching parts of various spy thrillers and changing them mid-episode on his iPad, while simultaneously doing things on his phone.
With this theme of time-wasting and distraction on my mind, I worked to use this flight well—it is amazing how much prayer, reading, and writing one can get done when one simply commits to not watching any video content! But even with this meditation in mind, I found the endeavor to be a constant struggle. More than once, I wanted to interrupt my prayer to check the in-flight food, beverage, and entertainment menu. Several times, I had to resist the urge to put down a book mid-chapter and see what shows and movies were streaming. It was a struggle to listen to an entire one-hour Mozart piece without pausing it to do something else. Even for those inclined to use their time well and develop disciplined habits related to leisure time and technology, the devouring Sirens call to us, beckoning us to be absorbed by the treacherous song that is their bright, flickering screen.
Observing the cultural landscape can be discouraging, but hope rather than discouragement remains the proper response. As in all times, one saint can change the world. Each person who realizes the depth of this problem, not just out there in the culture but in his own life, his own habits, his own heart, has an opportunity for personal and cultural renewal. The endeavor will require much prayer, a concerted effort that may take a lifetime, regular self-reflection, humble acknowledgment of failure, and a renewal of focus when we fall short of our noble aspirations to use our time well. The task is not an easy one.
And even a successful effort will usually not produce a world-changing statesman like St. Thomas More or a Shakespearean work of literature. But our ambitions need not be so high in order to transform the culture. Each person who commits to using his time well, for the glory of God and for what is good, cannot help but improve the life of his community and his neighbor. Perhaps picking up a book will lead to a conversation that changes someone’s life. Maybe a new area of study will lead to a group of friends enthusiastically embracing the work together. Even more subtly, maybe a life with less screentime and more prayer will bring the grace of conversion and healing to someone in desperate need, even if we do not see the fruits in this life.
How are we using our time? For many of us, the answer is “not well.” And the result of this cultural decadence is several generations of people who are addicted to screens, people who are mediocre when they could be great, who are not fully alive when they could be saints. With prayer, self-examination, and commitment of will, each person has the ability to radically change his own habits and reclaim his time. That change will inevitably result in a better, happier life. It could also change the world.
Image Credit: František Kaván, “Red poppies” (1910) via rawpixel.
