The ancient Greeks had no great love of work, either. They saw it as a necessity whose purpose was to clothe, shelter and feed the population, but that once that was out of the way, they could get back to the real business of life: namely, leisure. By this they did not mean just lazily lying about, nor, as leisure often seems to be nowadays, the frenetic pursuit of stimulation in a desperate attempt to fill the void so that we do not have to contemplate the emptiness of existence. No, it was in a way the opposite. A cultivation of stillness, the devotion of time and attention to what matters,
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