Last week, the weather here was absolutely superb. 65 degrees and sunny. I immediately came out of my mild, gray weather depression and trekked down to the Lac Dausmesnil in the Bois de Vincennes. I had heard there was a Buddhist Temple down there and I wanted to check it out. I had often seen monks wandering through the woods during my daily autumn hikes and thought I would pay them a visit. And although the temple of beautiful and the sounds coming from it (intricate patterns of drumming and chanting) were inspiring, what really struck me about the excursion was the number of people who were walking arm-in-arm around the lake, making out on the lawn, reading on a bench, feeding the ducks and peacocks, etc. For a Sunday this would be normal, but at 3 PM on a Thursday, I was a bit surprised. Of course many of these people were retired and there were certainly some tourists. The young people were probably part of the 9 percent of the population who is unemployed. But at this moment it didn't seem so bad to be unemployed. It costs nothing to sit on a log, listen to the sounds of the temple, and watch the ducks.

As I explored all the nooks and crannies of the lake, I began to think how lucky I am to have the means to be able to experience life without the grind of a 9-to-5. I am always going the wrong way on the metro and there is never a crowd. If it is a beautiful day, I am going to profit from it. And when I get an idea, I don't have to put it off until I have more time to develop it. It has also allowed me to play Sim City a lot. :) And as I watched the happy faces around the woods, I thought, maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Americans were forced to take a sabbatical every once in a while. To have the guilt-free time to really get to know themselves and pursue things that may not be immediately lucrative. I decided that in my Sim City, where I create the city and am responsible for all decisions affecting it, I will have mandatory sabbaticals. I don't know how often. Maybe 6 months every 5 years, or a year every decade, with a small stipend to live on. I don't want to consider the economics of it, because that takes the fun out of a fantasy. But what would you do if you had to take a year off? Where would you go? What would you look for?

When I first arrived in France in 2000 and came down with a freak case of mono, I picked out a dog-eared copy of Bertrand Russell's In Praise of Idleness. It seemed like a good read for someone facing at least a month of forced rest. Russell argues that the greatest discoveries and thoughts generally arise from leisure time and were the average person allowed to spend less time clocking in hours at a job, perhaps we would discover a great deal more about our world. The protestant work ethic of the United States guilts people into working, saying that working hard is a virtue. But is it the hours we spend in an office or a factory that we're going to cherish most at the end of our lives?

I understand that idleness is the bane of some of my more fiscally-minded friends and friends who have families to take care of, but I have to say that I appreciate life a lot more with less money and more time than I did with the inverse. So I ask you all, what would you do first, if you had nothing to do?