The Practice of Cultivating Your Gifts and Living a Life of Meaning

People's ideas about "free time" have changed a lot over the years. Because of how classes work in society, it was sometimes seen as a time that only the rich and powerful owned, like philosophers in ancient times and monks in the Middle Ages.

Capitalism turned it into a place where people could no longer be free to be themselves. So, do you need free time? How to have fun? How to take care of pleasure? Thinker of the present Wilhelm Schmid's ideas...

As the week starts every Monday with tiredness, boredom, and stress, and as every Friday is seen as a "holiday" because it's the weekend, have you ever stopped to ask, "What is the meaning of life?" besides eating, drinking, reproducing, and multiplying?

No mind doesn't try to figure out what life is all about... Plato said that "learn more" is the main goal. "To be good" meant something different to Aristotle and Hegel. "To know the truth" meant something else.

Nietzsche, on the other hand, says that life has no real value. It's just silence over and over again for him. He thinks of life as "something empty." For Buddha, life is about "endurance." It's painful and needs to be gone through in the easiest way possible.

Philosophers have almost always asked what life is all about and tried to find answers. But there is still no "absolute" answer that works for all ages and all people.

But this subject is so interesting and has such a deep well that even modern thinkers haven't given up on the search... Indeed, Wilhelm Schmid's "The Use of Free Time in Difficult Times" article tries to make sense of life through "free time" and give it a serious assessment:

"There's a lot that can be said about the time we live in, but at least it can't be called dull." We should use our free time to get away from all the stressful things going on around us and enjoy some peace and quiet so that we can really rest a little. There is a lot to do when you have free time.

This doesn't talk about being bored; it talks about being able to think about something for a long time, even when there is nothing else going on.

The deep emptiness you feel when you have free time is the exact opposite of the unwanted satiety that comes from being full of useless information, words, and feelings.

In fact, a person can find another satiety even in nothingness if they can handle it, make good use of it, and enjoy it.

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