It’s funny, but the On This Day widget on my personal blog tells me that precisely three years ago, I linked to a post about making sure that there was space in life. The original link is gone now, but here is a mirror of the essay: “Quitting the Paint Factory.” An excerpt:

Ah, but here’s the rub: Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due.