Finding Meaning Through Leisure: A Conversation with Suzy Ross

*Watch the full playlist above.

What Does Leisure Mean?

For Suzy, if people would look deeply, leisure is a state of mind; a situation where people feel a sense of freedom from all the things that concern them because they are enjoying what they are doing.

Leisure is a state of mind

Suzy: Leisure can be three different things: leisure can be an activity, something that we do, like the idea of sports, playing catch of any kind, gardening, something that you do. So leisure is an activity.

Like, what is leisure to you? Oh, leisure is, you know, picnicking; leisure is hiking, and so the focus is on the activity. Then for some people, if you say, what is leisure and they'll say, oh, it's time away from work – it's time off. 

It's time when I'm not focusing on anything stressful. So the focus of the mind is on the time. The time is different than work time. So there's a differentiation between leisure and work type of thing. But time is the differentiator. 

But if you're really looking deeply at leisure – leisure, as we learned from Plato and Aristotle is a state of mind. So leisure is a state of mind means that if we get to the essence of leisure, there's a state of mind that is essentially one of freedom. 

Whether it’s freedom from stress, freedom to love, freedom to joy, freedom to happiness, or freedom from something that we want to escape. But either way you look at it, there's an essential element of freedom, and in particular, is a freedom of the mind. 

So when I teach this to my students, I say, even if you are in the middle of work, you can be at leisure. And I asked them: am I at leisure right now or am I at work? 

Well, the longer we go in the conversation, it becomes very clear that even though I'm getting paid to teach you right now, I am at leisure. Why? Because my mind is free. My body-mind-spirit is free, I am not being held by obligation, or even desire to get paid. 

Right now I am free, I enjoy exactly what I'm doing right now. And that is leisure and therefore leisure could be essentially any activity.

Nick: Well, that makes sense to me. I mean, what I'm doing now, I don't see as work. I mean, it helps my business. But it is something I probably would consider and value as very meaningful. 

But it's almost like a form of intimacy, I could have this intellectual and emotional connection to someone. And so in a way, it is also a form of leisure, I really enjoy interviewing people and studying their work.

Defining Transformation

Play is not solely a form of entertainment; it can also be a way for people to transform themselves. What is it like to have a transformation? Suzy explains that transformation is about two main things: autopoiesis (the process of an entity recreating itself) and structure building.

Transformation is a phenomenon of the universe

Nick: One thing you've touched on, which is very important, in relation to the ikigai concept is transformation. And you write about play being a way for us to transform ourselves. But I think we need to define transformation. So how would you define transformation?

Suzy: Okay, so yeah, defining transformation is no small thing, right? I feel like I've been working on defining transformation for about a decade. And I'm actually just in the final touches of finally writing an article where I'm operationally defining it. 

I'm hoping to publish it next year. But I did a concept analysis, it's called transformation to be able to analyze about 15 different disciplines, probably more actually, because transformation is in almost every discipline.

Because transformation is a phenomenon of the universe. So of course, all these different various diverse disciplines have their angle about transformation. And I think that right now, getting it down to its very essence, transformation is about two main things.

I'll get very technical here. The first part is about autopoiesis, and autopoiesis is the process of an entity recreating itself. So yes, it's a very amazing phenomena. And so we are entities that recreate ourselves.

And then the other major part of transformation is about structure building. So if you think about it, when we transform, if you think about the quintessential example transformation as a butterfly: you got to go from a caterpillar to a butterfly to entirely different beings. 

And that's what transformation is right? It really is, isn't just feeling different. It's not an aha moment. It's not just like, wow, I've had this really unbelievable experience, whether it was really wonderful or awful. And now I'm a different person. 

It's so much more of a longer process than that, and in order to bring us to become an entirely different human being. And so what transformation requires is that our structure rearranges, and that we come out with a new structure. 

So what's a human structure? Human structures are a different study that I did, identified that we have three human structures that transform, one is the ego, one is the mind, and one is the body. 

And they go in that order, that our first transformation in life is transforming our ego. The second transformation is our mind. And the third transformation is our body. If we're lucky, many of us, you know, might not have that many transformations in one lifetime. But if we're lucky, we do. And so there's that.

Transforming Life With Leisure

How does play or leisure relate to ikigai? For Suzy, play and leisure are integral to transformation because they provide us with experiences that help us keep moving forward. Same with ikigai, an experiential concept: we can feel ikigai through the experiences we accumulate in life; these experiences give us a sense that life is moving forward.

Leisure is essential to transformation

Nick: I see, this transformation is a theme I've looked at in ikigai. And it relates specifically to someone I'll touch on in a minute. But there's something I'd love to quote from your chapter in relation to transformative leisure and play. And you write:

“Play and leisure are integral to transformation, because it unfolds through moments of experience, some of which are extraordinary, others might be deemed important, and many viewed as mundane. Regardless of the importance assigned by the individual, living life experientially, is tantamount of transformation.”

When I read this, I thought, oh, this is fantastic because ikigai is experiential too – you have these life experiences, you make meaning of them.

But what's interesting is the mother of ikigai, this amazing woman, Mieko Kamiya, who wrote the seminal book called Ikigai-ni-tsuite which would translate to about ikigai. 

She wrote about transformational experiences, and how the the triggers for them can happen in the midst of our day-to-day living. So I guess, in the mundane, and maybe the problem is that we're so distracted, we're not being in the present, that we missed them. 

But these triggers allow for transformation, which in turn, might provide us with new reasons for living. So obviously, play can do that for us. 

And so I guess my question is, how can play or leisure transform our lives? I know that's not an easy question. 

Suzy: I think a core piece of understanding this sort of line of thinking is that you honed into experiences. You know, in that quote, I'm talking about experiences are the key and you're saying, yeah, ikigai happens through experiences.

Well, you could listen to that sentence and one level and say, well, that's totally strange, because all of life is an experience. What are you talking about? Like, you're not saying anything profound, because everything is about experiencing while you're alive, you're having experience -- you're dead, you're dead. 

But that's not quite. And so the distinction I want to make is that  when I say experiences in that sentence, what I'm talking about is the difference between being a spectator and having an experience. 

So anytime we're spectating: watching TV, watching a sport, watching other people play. When we're being a spectator. We're not really fully having an experience. Also, when we're abstracting with our minds, we're being super abstract. 

It depends on what's happening there. But that could enter into where we're not quite in the experience. So another way to think about it is when our whole body-mind-spirit is engaged actively, then we're in an experience. 

And as soon as you're in an experience, you are propelling forward in your transformation, because transformation is happening 24/7 throughout our life, because it's a function of the universe. 

So because we're a part of the universe, we are always in this process of transformation. But when we are experiencing something, especially if we're feeling our feelings, our emotions, then we're actually propelling ourselves forward. 

And we're allowing ourselves to move forward through this flowing outward of transformation. Where as if we're spectating or whatnot, we're definitely kind of putting like a dam in the river and slowing things down.

Nick: Wow, that idea of propelling forward really connects to ikigai. Because ikigai could be defined as the activities or experiences in your life that make you feel your life is moving forward. 

So which ties into maybe themes of growth and change and transformation. You're touching on this idea of almost like, it's almost like knowledge, if we accumulate knowledge, it can be helpful, but it really doesn't mean anything until we do something with that knowledge – we action it or we experience life through using that knowledge. 

So that idea of either being the observer, or someone who's actually experiencing the experience definitely makes sense. 

What is meaning-making?

Suzy wrote about three activities that when intertwined with leisure can contribute to transformation. One of them is meaning-making.

Recognizing what matters most to you

Nick: You write about three activities, that when woven explicitly and mindfully into leisure, can contribute to transformation. So would you like to touch on those three activities? One is meaning-making.

Suzy: So when we're going through the process of transformation, we can use our mind to be able to raise awareness and consciousness, we can use our mind to be able to savor and to reelevate our emotional connection, and our emotive experience, how much an experience touches us.

We can use our mind by savoring and reflecting, by appreciating, and that elevates the emotional engagement, which helps us to feel even more into who am I. And when we feel our emotions like that when we can savor the experience, we're really savoring ourselves. 

That is something that is healing and also joyful; it propels us towards our own becoming, it helps us lean forward into our becoming, and our mind can be a wonderful tool to be able to understand: why did something happen? Why did something really a difficult time happened to me in those years? 

And our mindfulness about it, our reflection on it can help us to be able to make sense of it and make meaning of it in a larger context, that causes healing the causes increased consciousness which contributes to our self-becoming.

Because transformation is about becoming -- becoming a new you, the you that you're destined to become.  

And so the meaning-making can propel you towards that in a more conscious and emotionally connected way. Nature itself is presence, it is pure presence. And so being in nature, helps us to become present with ourselves, and helps us to become present. 

And then there's a stillness there, there's a quietness there, there's beauty that's so accessible, and it reflects who we are: just beautiful, and quiet, and spacious on the inside, and harmonious. 

And so we get to have so much healing, and all of that contributes to our own becoming. And then finally, spirituality, in the most widest way of understanding it is meaning-making. 

If you're atheist, a person who's atheist, you know, spirituality can be translated into meaning-making: what's meaningful to you. But other sort of spiritual ways of looking at things as being able to understand what do you believe in? What is love? Is there something larger than me that's happening that I'm a part of? 

And engaging in those big picture questions and those feelings of something larger than ourselves, opening ourselves to larger than ourselves, that opens us to our own becoming.

For the full podcast conversation, go to: Transformative leisure and play: Bringing forth our reason for being