The Role of Leisure in Sustainable
Development
Beata Kolny
1 Introduction
The whole human life flows in time—via astronomical, biological, in various forms
of cultural and social time to a time that can be called ‘personal time’, or one person’s
life. As stated by Szczepa´ nski (1999), ‘every living organism, and thus also every
human body, creates their own time and each phenomenon or class of phenomena
of human life produces a time different from the time created by other people’. Free
time is one of the times experienced by man. It should be emphasized that it is not
time that is free, but it is man who is free to consider non-compulsory behaviours
and experience freedom from worries and activities forced by biological processes,
and therefore is free to the world and its culture (Arendt 1994). However, it happens
that man lacks the freedom to ‘stop’, reflect or rest, because they constantly try to
race against time and win with themselves. They pursue success, and everything that
is of popular and mass nature, so as not to accidentally stand out from others. Living
in a constant hurry, constant competition and the fear of having less or being less
successful than others, makes human beings work more to always win this race and
not be left behind, often at the expense of their leisure time. However, human life
cannot be reduced only to homo laborans, i.e., the realisation of humanity only in
professional work, or to homo oeconomicus, i.e., maximizing profits of economic
value. This is because the holistic development of man should take into account
appropriately selected forms of leisure time in a way that will give them satisfaction
and pleasure, and which will allow them to rest both physically and mentally after
the work is finished (Dzwonkowska 2011).
A language comment regarding the notion of ‘free time’ is important here. In
Polish, it is used to describe two different phenomena for which both French and
B. Kolny (B)
Department of Market and Consumption, University of Economics in Katowice, 1 Maja 50,
40-287 Katowice, Poland
e-mail: beata.kolny@ue.katowice.pl
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Lubowiecki-Vikuk et al. (eds.), Handbook of Sustainable Development and Leisure
Services, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59820-4_3
39
Development
Beata Kolny
1 Introduction
The whole human life flows in time—via astronomical, biological, in various forms
of cultural and social time to a time that can be called ‘personal time’, or one person’s
life. As stated by Szczepa´ nski (1999), ‘every living organism, and thus also every
human body, creates their own time and each phenomenon or class of phenomena
of human life produces a time different from the time created by other people’. Free
time is one of the times experienced by man. It should be emphasized that it is not
time that is free, but it is man who is free to consider non-compulsory behaviours
and experience freedom from worries and activities forced by biological processes,
and therefore is free to the world and its culture (Arendt 1994). However, it happens
that man lacks the freedom to ‘stop’, reflect or rest, because they constantly try to
race against time and win with themselves. They pursue success, and everything that
is of popular and mass nature, so as not to accidentally stand out from others. Living
in a constant hurry, constant competition and the fear of having less or being less
successful than others, makes human beings work more to always win this race and
not be left behind, often at the expense of their leisure time. However, human life
cannot be reduced only to homo laborans, i.e., the realisation of humanity only in
professional work, or to homo oeconomicus, i.e., maximizing profits of economic
value. This is because the holistic development of man should take into account
appropriately selected forms of leisure time in a way that will give them satisfaction
and pleasure, and which will allow them to rest both physically and mentally after
the work is finished (Dzwonkowska 2011).
A language comment regarding the notion of ‘free time’ is important here. In
Polish, it is used to describe two different phenomena for which both French and
B. Kolny (B)
Department of Market and Consumption, University of Economics in Katowice, 1 Maja 50,
40-287 Katowice, Poland
e-mail: beata.kolny@ue.katowice.pl
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2021
A. Lubowiecki-Vikuk et al. (eds.), Handbook of Sustainable Development and Leisure
Services, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59820-4_3
39