"If we would only give, just once, the same amount of reflection to what we want to get out of life that we give to the question of what to do with a two weeks' vacation, we would be startled at our false standards and the aimless procession of our busy days"
About this Quote
The sting in Dorothy Canfield Fisher's line is how politely it indicts us. She doesn't scold ambition or pleasure; she targets the mismatch between our meticulous planning for small liberties and our casual improvisation with the rest of existence. The two weeks' vacation is a perfect prop: modern enough to feel practical, limited enough to invite obsessive optimization, and revealing enough to expose how easily we confuse logistics with meaning.
Fisher's intent is less self-help than moral accounting. By setting "reflection" against the "aimless procession" of "busy days", she frames busyness as a kind of anesthesia: motion that feels like purpose. The subtext is that our standards are "false" not because we choose the wrong things, but because we rarely choose at all. We inherit priorities from employers, social calendars, and respectable expectations, then mistake that inheritance for an authentic plan. Vacation becomes the only socially sanctioned moment to ask, What do I want? The rest of the year we settle for, What do I have to do?
Context matters. Writing in an era when industrial schedules and middle-class leisure were solidifying, Fisher is noticing a cultural pivot: life chopped into work blocks with a small, rationed window for selfhood. Her rhetorical move is surgical, too: she doesn't demand a grand philosophy, just the same level of thought we already know how to apply to travel itineraries. The jolt comes from recognizing that our most careful planning often serves the smallest slice of our life.
Fisher's intent is less self-help than moral accounting. By setting "reflection" against the "aimless procession" of "busy days", she frames busyness as a kind of anesthesia: motion that feels like purpose. The subtext is that our standards are "false" not because we choose the wrong things, but because we rarely choose at all. We inherit priorities from employers, social calendars, and respectable expectations, then mistake that inheritance for an authentic plan. Vacation becomes the only socially sanctioned moment to ask, What do I want? The rest of the year we settle for, What do I have to do?
Context matters. Writing in an era when industrial schedules and middle-class leisure were solidifying, Fisher is noticing a cultural pivot: life chopped into work blocks with a small, rationed window for selfhood. Her rhetorical move is surgical, too: she doesn't demand a grand philosophy, just the same level of thought we already know how to apply to travel itineraries. The jolt comes from recognizing that our most careful planning often serves the smallest slice of our life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Meaning of Life |
|---|
More Quotes by Dorothy
Add to List
