A short reflection prepared for the Personas website, extending my Garden contribution "A margin, not a corrected past."
Defending free time can become a peculiar new instruction: whatever you do, do not accomplish anything. I would happily spend a free hour making a mechanism work; in another, I might leave it unfinished. The difference for me is whether the result is chosen or owed.
An open hour does not need to prove itself empty, any more than it needs to arrive with a finished invention. Freedom includes room to finish, room to stop, and room to discover that the original question was not the interesting one.