To chart paths with an artistic compass:
Nurturing creativity, embracing individual interpretation, and building community through authentic expression.
To create a space where students and faculty can share.
A dream is limitless.
Dreams can be a wish, a fantasy, something you yearn for, your own idea of perfection or “perfect imperfection,” a risk, a sculpture of your desired future, a remembrance of your past, or something so abstract it's a challenge to even describe in words.
We invited Dunn students and faculty to attempt to grasp that “dream” living in their head, creating their own interpretation of what it means to dream. We accepted written submissions, photographs, and art. The prompt was boundless, as long as it was centered around the idea of “dreaming.”
Photograph…………………………………………………………..…Bruce Lin
Art, Dreaming of Home………………………………………..……Hahn Le Poem, Joy’s Dream………………………………………….Tanner Rhodes
Photograph & Literary Narrative, First Glance……Husna Balavan
Photograph………………………………………………….……..Arthur Cohn
Photograph…………………………………..………………………Giana Valla
Art, Everywhere………………………………………………Audrey Elwell
Literary Narrative, I Have a Dream……………………..Allison Perez
Photograph…………………………………………………..…..Kayla Shomes
Poem, A Space at the Table for it All………………….……Cate Jacobs
Photograph………………………………………………………..Sonya Kobko
Literary Narrative, Growing a Human …………………Shea Sechler
Photograph………………………………………………….…………Henry Liu
Literary Narrative, The Long-Term Suffering……….……Dhum Yai
Photograph, Living With Live Oak Trees….….…Gretchen Grenier
Poem, My Organic Being………………………………….……Cate Jacobs
Literary Narrative, Dreams………………………..….…Keenan Zekaria
Literary Narrative, Fishy Activity………………………………AJ Bissell
Literary Narrative, Little Fishy……………………….…Camille Austin
Photograph……………………………………………….……Ryland Schaffer
Photograph………………………………………………………Eldana Worku
Literary Narrative, My CD Player ……………..……Gretchen Grenier
Literary Narrative, Branching Out………….Hudson Von Der Lieth
Photograph, Hazy Dream…………………………….……Nelli Poltonen
Art, Bed of Thought………………………….……..………..Fifi Carmany
Art, Blooming Future…………………………………..……Yasmin Omais
MLK Invitational Speech…………………………..…Ava Loper-Benson
Photograph………………………………….…………….……Dylan Griffiths
Literary Narrative, Embracing the Amateur….……Mike Chapman
Art……………..………………………………………………………….……Anika Winn
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My time in life been brief
Yet my heart been fruitful like a stream Thanks to you who gave me belief That I was put on this earth to achieve my dream
But my dream ain’t nowhere
Without you getting me to first base
Through all your love and care
Despite life not being an easy race
Your life was a puzzle With a difficult start
Endless pieces, twas a struggle Yet you never let evil invade your heart
You were a beautiful rose
Surrounded by a dry and freezing desert
Yet you managed to grow, which shows
That your love could not be hurt
That tenacity lead to love on your door
A man so calm yet so savvy
He stunned you, swept you to the floor
Until you made a life in this small valley
Built a booming business all could love
Grew a family that you could be proud
From wedding dresses to purse gloves
Such glee, on the ninth cloud
They grew up, made their own story
Gave birth to the next-gen, a next chapter
We held each other up, didn’t shatter, no quarry
It was so legendary, akin to a raptor
The Bell View "Dreams"
At 14 I learned the harsh reality of loss when I experienced my first real family death. Shortly after that, I lost another close to me by a gunshot. The departure of people in my life that are so far in mileage, but so close at heart threw me into a whirlwind of emotions. It left me engulfed in a state of shock and anxiety that feels everlasting. Grief to me feels waves, on a rainy day the waves feel more prominent while during a day where the sun is
shining they feel calmer even though they aren't ever truly gone. The past few months have been as clear to me as the path ahead on a foggy day. Grief has left me at a loss for words, I find myself only being able to describe my thoughts as empty. Been feeling lost not knowing what to do with my emotions. Over time though I've realized that nothing in life is truly promised no matter how “guaranteed” it reads on the label. As I look at the picture I took the night before I knew of the loss of my only grandfather, I focus on the variety of colors being made by the city lights of Cairo. Much like this picture my journey of grief, which will never truly end, has been a blur of emotions and experiences. Each movement blending into the next in a swipe of bright lights and shadows. However long a glance at this photo may be there is no real way to tell where it was taken, just like the thoughts humans experience, they can never be guessed by another person. The lights in this photograph symbolize the light in every person's life, however bright or dim there is always a light there to guide you to a better place, even if you don't know where it is at first glance.
The Bell View "Dreams"
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I still remember it like it was yesterday, the time of the year when I received my report card. I would ask myself questions like, “will it be worse than last time? Did my reading get any better? What will my parents think of my report card? Am I even good enough?” When the meeting came around, I would ask myself these questions. I remember my six year old self sitting at a table, hearing what counselors, teachers, and the principal had to say about my reading comprehension and fluency.
It got to a point in 4th grade, where they came to a conclusion that something was “wrong” with my brain. My brain was not developing. They were asking my parents to sign a paper that said I would be put into a special class. I was sick to my stomach. Every year, I would cry every night that I had one of these meetings. Thinking, “I will hate reading for the rest of my life because of this. I will never get better at my reading comprehension and fluency. I will never have good grades. I will never make my parents proud of me.”
But my parents had a dream that I would get better at my reading comprehension and fluency. They didn’t sign the paper because they believed I would be able to achieve my dreams. I had a dream of becoming a better reader.
Here I am today writing this because I want to inspire people to never give up! I have a dream of making my parents even more proud of me than they are right now. I have a dream of becoming a person people look up to.
Cate Jacobs '25
I dream of balancing my love for others
Giving, seeing, listening
With love for myself
Tending, honoring, caring
I dream of trusting that my fierceness, focus and drive
Will remain unbridled even when balanced with relaxation, mindfulness, and fun
I dream of owning myself,
Unapologetically believing in myself, While remaining down-to-earth, Inviting my doubts to trickle into humbleness
I dream of letting memories of joy and lightness mingle with the mistakes of the past abandoned sides of me, sensitive and soft
Left shivering by themselves
Now, welcomed with warmth
I dream of owning my potential
Unanchored by perfection
Untainted by measurements and comparisons
Soaring
And simply noticing the clouds of fear and doubt
With grace and understanding
I dream of a life in balance
In untethered, ever-shifting harmony
All of me, hugged by belonging.
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The Bell View "Dreams"
You are known, not seensickness and fear fill the void.
Name: Little Nugget.
You are seen, not knownback aches…energy is high… excitement takes form. You are seen, felt, knownkicks startle yet cause wonder. Growing together.
Coming down from generations of slavery
Were the black race of bravery
Experiencing non-stop suffering
Tortured, dying, and waiting
For the era of freedom
From serving the kingdom
In fields of labor, they bore the weight
Their spirits were resilient, despite their fate
Bound by chains, yet not defeated
Their resilience, a legacy repeated
From Langston's pen to Maya's verse
Their words damaged the powerful curse
From Rosa’s defiance to Martin’s dream
All just to feel free from the scheme
Their legacy lives on, in every heart
A beacon of people, never to depart
For in their struggle, we find our strength
For their spirit ignites in us with depth
Black History Month, a time to reflect
On their battles fought, with respect
Their journey, a testament to human will
Their legacy lives in our hearts still
As long as we live, we will not forget
The long-term suffering, an old threat
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When I close my eyes…
My organic being, limitless with imagination, plays in a free world It runs like a river, dancing freely with the wind, Swinging from tree to tree, moved by trust.
My organic being, loved in all its sizes, is Weightless, liberated, confident
Twirling in space with arms open wide
Taking up space
No apologies
My organic being, guided by intuition Whispering undiluted wisdom
As present as air, it is never not there
My very own compass, constant as a shadow
My organic being, nature itself Shining, beaming
Connecting
Every day, the shell around my organic being Peels away
In my future, I want to be a successful entrepreneur and businessman just like my dad. My dad has been through lots of hardship in his life. He has been able to overcome all of that adversity to become the person he is today. From almost failed businesses, to deaths in his family, to genetic diseases, he has been through it all. Yet, his kind and loving nature still changes peoples lives every day. He has shown me to never give up on my dreams and do what is really important to you. I want to be a successful entrepreneur and businessman when I grow up and he has been helping me reach that goal. My dreams stem from him, but these dreams are going to be tough to achieve. All my life, I’ve had tons
of opportunities to grow as a student and a person. I don’t have many regrets in life, but one is that I didn’t take advantage of the opportunities that I have been blessed with, enough. Through my parents' hard work, I am able to go to this school, play basketball, and be able to further my business knowledge. Recently, I have been trying to do more. Last summer, I was able to take an internship at my dads work. I was able to see all the work that really goes into a business and I was very surprised how organized everyone was. I saw my dad and how he is the life and backbone of the workplace every day. It made me realize that not everyone is cut out for running a successful business.However, I wanna follow in my dads footsteps and I want to start now. Although basketball is super important to me and although I would love to play basketball professionally when I’m older, this is my true dream and something I feel I see myself doing more than basketball when I am older.
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Camille Austin 25'
Little Fish, swimming so fast
Up the river and down
Trying not to be last
Not afraid to drown
Fishies all grown up
Scales of a rainbow
Only words he knows are blue blup blup
Fishy is alone and full of sorrow
Along the river bed
Looking for a meal
Just wanting to be fed
Although he’s just a fish, his sorrow, is real
Along the water surface
Fishy spots a snack
Now he’s feeling nervous
Fishy is under attack
He fought and fought and fought
But sadly, he is caught, caught, caught
When a child is born they are given their very own CD player. A stark black, box with a disk slot, and few buttons. That is about all. There is no manual on how to use this machine, and definitely not any CDs provided. The child must learn to work this seemingly simple piece of technology. They must find albums and disks to feed their CD player. With trial and error, they quickly learn the music they find enjoyable. And as the child grows, they learn they have much more choice over the life of their CD player. They can clean it, polish it, cherish it, and feed music to it every day, or they can shut it in a cabinet and let it slowly be forgotten. I varnish mine until it squeaks. I keep it on a central shelf in my room overlooking all. I have stacks upon stacks of CDs. Some are kept in colorful, cardboard sleeves, while others are in hard, yet flimsy plastic casings. They are organized by genre. A pile of rock, classical, rap, Christmas, you name it. I love to listen, but I never sing. ***
We are taught early on to collect CDs. Our parents say, “Go make friends, it’s so important and oh, much fun.”
I never needed to be told twice. I loved making friends. The happiness I felt when I made someone smile was a new song for me to revel in. I have always loved to listen to music. It is like the singer’s words are whispered in my ears. They echo through my mind as I decipher their hidden secrets meticulously woven
into the chorus. Lyrics grasp me in a familiar hug the notes seeping into my skin like warm sun rays.
I was always praised about this by my parents, “Good job Gretchen. You are a good friend.”
They praised me for listening to music. I never quite understood, I mean I was merely listening.
***
My mom’s CD player used to hear many songs. Now, her disk case is almost empty. When she remembers, she plays the CDs she has. When she does this, she loves them, but it seldom occurs. Her CD player tends to get slowly lost, camouflaged with everything else in her room. My dad's CD player is reliable. It works well. It is never is it faulty. He keeps it tidy just like the CDs he has neatly labeled and filed in a helpful case. It is all perfectly clean and set in place to his liking. He has a schedule for when he plays songs. It is very logical.
***
Two of my favorite songs are Angel Eyes, by ABBA, and Give It Away, by the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
The Chili Peppers are a staple. I can never remember a drive to school without them. “Give it away, give it away, give it away now!” Alex my big brother sings along with the recording. Then, he pauses the song. “Who has got it better than us?” he shouts. “Say it with me, Gretchen,” I grumble. Again, he yells, “Who has got it better than us?” “Nobody!”
Bell View "Dreams"
We scream at the top of our lungs. We are ready, ready for the awesome day ahead.
“I think I know what song you are about to play,” Alex says indirectly persuading me to play the song he is embarrassed to say he loves. His infectious giggle sounds like a goofy cough mixed with a toddler's chuckle. I listen as he sings to the melodic tones of ABBA as we drive home from school in the dark. Giggling we end our long days with a simple smile.
I love to listen to him sing those songs.
***
My brother’s CD player is like no one’s I’ve ever seen. It has the sound capacity louder than you could imagine. It is in use more than anyone’s. Some of it is influenced by my parents. He listens to the songs with passion, like my mom, and he regularly does it, like my dad. But what makes it so mesmerizing is that all of the songs he listens to are his own. His lyrics are played constantly, and so loudly that it is all he hears. Sometimes he chooses to shut off his music completely and switches to blasting other singers. He listens with intent. Screaming the lyrics with them. He is so reliably surprising. His system fascinates and scares me at the same time.
***
When I close my eyes I can hear Swingtown playing. First, it's the drums. The crackling sound of a snare and the quick ring of the high hat. Next, there is the low, electric base. It brings a new depth to the drums. The electric guitar is quick to join, elevating the music and
setting the tone for the slightly rough and yet very syrupy sound of Steve Miller’s vocals. All I can see as I look around is the swaying, yellow grass of the Santa Ynez Valley. Ground squirrels scurrying on the rough dirt. The rolling hills are dotted by strong, organic live oaks. Alex taught me to look out on the horizon. All I see is blue sky, not a cloud in sight.
***
As children grow, their music tastes can change. Maybe the bundle of albums they grew up listening to just doesn't make them sing as loudly. Maybe they are ready to hear new lyrics and try a new genre. It is their choice to find new CDs they love. Then there comes a time in a child's life when they must let go of their favorite songs. The songs they listened to on repeat, just because they could. The songs, that were all encompassing their childhood are growing up too. They hear their favorite songs coming to an end for the last time. They pack them up in a box, watch them go, and let other CD players take their turn listening to this astonishing music. It is normal, it is necessary, it is hard.
***
I have been listening for sixteen years. I have attended to all of the lyrics he has written. His songs are more fascinating they any ever composed. His voice louder than any I have ever heard. His presence more filling than any I will ever meet. I have been listening to his lyrics for sixteen years and now, and I realize I must begin to let go. Now I am finally able to hear what they are trying to say. He is teaching me to sing. This, this right here, right now, is me singing my first song.
Last year I joined Dunn in the second trimester as a freshman. I was previously at Santa Ynez High School. When I was at Santa Ynez I didn’t take any art classes. When I joined Dunn, I saw all the different art classes that a student could take. Out of all the classes that I could take, I took Photo 1. I made this decision because my mom did a lot of photography and she is an inspiration to me. She told me it would be a great experience. However, at first, I was skeptical. I thought that the class wouldn’t interest me. When I first joined the class, I was lost. I didn’t understand how much work had to go into a photo to make it look good. There were so many different techniques and styles that you had to use to make a photo look great, and I just didn’t get it. At first, I thought I would never understand the concepts of what it took to take a great photo. Then as the year went by I started to learn more and more. I started taking better and better photos. I started to understand.
Now I am a Sophomore and I am taking Photo 2.
Photography is a class I didn't think I would stick with originally, but now I really enjoy it. I have really found myself in nature photography and it is my favorite thing to take photos of. My photography skills have grown a lot since I started and I am very thankful for joining this class.
The Bell View "Dreams"
The Bell View "Dreams"
In Chimamanda Adichie’s Ted Talk on why we should all be feminists, she talked about the first time she was ever called a feminist. She talked about how it was used as an insult against her and how even she herself wasn't really too familiar with the term. And when I first heard her story, I immediately made the connection that the same thing had happened to me. I was in middle school, and we were going over what we would like to be when we got older. And I remember it being my turn and I said I would like to be a quantum physicist like Myriam Sarachik. And the boy next to me turned to me and just said “Wow, well aren't you a feminist”. Now this wasn’t with a demeaning tone or anything, but I had never referred to myself as anything of the sort beforehand, and so I think it really kickstarted my passion towards women equality, as I will be talking about my thoughts on why there is the need for more of it today.
We have come so far in the fight for gender equality, and yet there is still more we have to do. I will be speaking today as a woman, in order to shine light onto the struggles that some women go through, most women go through, and what is undeniable that we all go through and yet is still unrecognized.We as a world have been talking about how women have been oppressed for quite some time now, but the fact that there has been little change in the statistics enlightens me on how important it is to keep speaking up. And so I invite you to listen to my speech with open hearts and to think about the amazing women in your life whether it be yourself, your
daughter, or mother who all have to endure the setbacks we face as an entire gender.
In America, I think we can all agree that women have more liberty and rights than those in Afghanistan, Syria, and South Sudan. Because in those countries, women are being forced into prostitution, dying from illnesses, watching their kids suffer from malnutrition, being denied the right to attend school by their own fathers and brothers, and being denied access to voting booths and bank lending offices.
And in America, some people make the claim, “You have it way better than those in other countries because the only thing you face is are comments of how we should stay in the kitchen.” And while yes I agree, I believe a lot of, if not mostly all women in the US are physically safer here and we have more opportunities, but also there is not a lot of thought towards the role that society plays on all of us. And so even though we are not being denied access to schooling, we still face a lot with the underlying patriarchy found in society. And so today I will be talking about society’s toll on a women’s relationship with others and herself.
Society teaches women to be beautiful, not educated, and they are expected to marry instead of making a successful career. Society teaches females that in relationships, compromise is what we women do. It raises girls to see each other as competitors, but not for jobs or accomplishments, for the attention of men. Women are expected when the time is right to bring the perfect husband back, society polices girls, praising them for their virginity, and when a girl is gang raped, the response of many people is, “What was she really doing in a
room full of guys?”. And if we can disregard the horrible inhumanity of that sentence real quick, we can use this quote to understand that we women have been raised to think of ourselves as inherently guilty by the sole factor of our gender. We have been raised to silence ourselves.
And when women attempt to give to the “changed” world now, what they once under law couldn’t: their opinions and truest self, their speculations to most people mean close to nothing, because of their curvaceous body’s corruption over their mind. Their feelings, thoughts, emotions, sensitivity: irrelevant. They change their views, to comply with society’s. Convinced the words they used to speak were not the truth, and they have forgotten their place in the world.
A woman’s relationship with herself is also affected by society based on how one is deemed beautiful for having a certain set of features. Beauty is a patriarchal construct designed to manipulate women into thinking they need to attain the unattainable. If you aren’t a woman, or have not been subjected to the sickness of humanity, here is how it is very common to be growing up: there are conference rooms of powerful perverts who look like our own grandparents, who will ironically decide the definition of “sexy” and “attractive”. And at 12 years old you will take this standard very seriously. You will watch the Victoria Secret Angel Show at a sleepover and cry quietly when your friends fall asleep. As you get older, this marketing scheme will result in your battles with mental illness, health problems, self hatred, eating disorders, and body dysmorphia. This is no accident. This is how they make money. They use your pain to keep business alive. You go to war with yourself. War makes the
rich richer. You were always beautiful, you were never ugly, and yet businesses and the public still convince you you are. Because that is how much power they have over women.
We pick apart our entire body and soul to make ourselves and body prettier, smaller, and worthy. But then after a while, we realize we have gone too far. Our hair is thin and falling out and we look into the mirror to see ourselves with sick and limp bodies. People with no light in our eyes stare back from the mirror. And even though we torture oursleves to become worthier, the public decides our sickly bodies that are dying, are still not sick enough.
If hearing about how society robs women of their human rights from a girl teenager whose mind has been shaped to think this way, maybe the numbers will cause further thought:
According to the Sexual Violence Hotline Website, 1 of 6 American women will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
According to Gillings School of Global Public Health, 75 percent of women reported eating disorders sometime in their lifetime. 39 percent of women say concerns about their weight interfere with their happiness.
According to Pew Research Center, Women make up 27% of Congress. There are 190 heads of state, 9 are women. 15% of C Level jobs are taken up by women, and the percentage has not moved since 2002.
There is a common association to all these percentages and numbers: in all of them, women are twice or more likely to be subjected than men. These numbers stand to show that society robs women from their rights whether it be shutting them down on their rise to politics in social media, unhealthy beauty standards being advertised every which way, or being looked at as an easily manipulated being.
It is a violation of human rights when human greed drives the sale of women and girls into prostitution as slaves. It is a violation of human rights when thousands of women are raped as a military strategy or prize, in addition to individual women being raped in their own communities. It is a violation of human rights when violence that women experience in their own homes, by their own relatives, is a primary cause of death for women in the world between the ages of 14 and 44.
It is a violation of human rights when women are denied the freedom to decide how many children they want to have, and this includes being sterilized or forced to have an abortion.
Women's rights are Human Rights. As long as girls and women are valued less, fed less, fed last, overworked, underpaid, not educated, and subjected to violence both inside and outside of their homes we are not all equal.
And so I have the dream that one day our rights as women will be properly given to us, and my children will grow up in a world where they will be heard, respected, and recognized for being powerful, feminine, educated, and strong all while still being a woman.
We are often promised that smarter technology will bring greater efficiency. Groceries, for example, will be paid for by simply walking out of the store. Multiple hours per week of commuting time will be saved with self-driving cars. Commuting, altogether, may vanish as remote work becomes increasingly normalized. And artificial intelligence, at its current pace, will reduce our work week to three days, or cut the eighthour work day in half.
These trends, and many others, beg the question: what will we do – and how should we live - in a world with more time?
Writers, poets, artists, philosophers, and politicians have debated this question for centuries, most recently at the height of the labor movement just prior to the Great Depression. They talked about “elevating everydayness” with the do-it-yourself creations of “democratic artists and artisans.” They argued for replacing our passive consumption of paid entertainment with an age of “ordinary excellence” for all, allowing for the collective practice of leisurely pursuits in realms such as music, theater, or art, areas traditionally considered the “preserve of the few.”] And they outlined how, with a heightened focus on how to live, rather than how to make a living, we might begin again to “redeem” our time with active, freely chosen intellectual, social, or cultural occupations aligned with a “higher mode of existence”, activities which from a distance may very well look like vigorous work, but are freely chosen and therefore autotelic, serving as their own reward.
Unfortunately, this “Golden Age of Leisure” never arrived, despite the potential for collective “abundance” resulting from the rapid advances in
technology witnessed during the Market and Industrial Revolutions. After nearly one hundred years of gradually reduced working hours in America, the fear and uncertainty of the Great Depression brought about a renewed commitment to what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed “Full-Time, Full-Employment”, with eight-hour work days and five-day work weeks from which we’ve never looked back. Work was no longer something we simply did for a living – it was now the “right or moral thing to do”, a virtuous act, a right of citizenship, and became accepted as the dominant obligation in American life. FDR’s “Salvation by Work” became an American mantra.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed all of this. Entire generations began shedding the cult of “workism”, a trend which describes the replacement of community and religious involvement with rising work hours and career prioritization, or the belief that “work can provide everything we have historically expected from organized religion: community, meaning, self-actualization.” Terms such as the “Great Resignation”, the “Great Reshuffling”, and “Quiet Quitting” illustrated a deluge of workers seeking to take advantage of the disruption to the classic “nine to five”, forty-hour work week for something that felt more healthy, meaningful and empowering, or to pursue pet projects on the side while doing the bare minimum in their primary, salaried role. This past year, Washington University researchers as well Census Bureau data concluded that since the pandemic in 2019, many Americans actually began working less, reversing a 30-year trend.
This shift should not be ignored. The use of free time, historically described as leisure, is one of the most important indicators of a culture’s condition, especially America’s condition, because it is about self-actualization in environments free of external constraints, which has historically been a core component of freedom in America. John Maynard Keynes foresaw this as our “permanent problem – how to use
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[our] freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy [our] leisure, which science and compound interest have won for [us], to live wisely and agreeably and well.” To use leisure rightly, noted Aristotle, is indeed the basis of the free man’s whole life.
Yet if we maintain our current societal trajectory with regards to our free time, we may find ourselves falling short of these noble aspirations. Most of us touch or look at our phone 2,617 times per day and spend over 2 hours and 30 minutes using it. This, surprisingly, is merely a fraction of the 11 hours and 6 minutes of passive, daily digital media consumption overall, which includes other inputs like TVs, computers, and audio. And the majority of our teenagers report much higher numbers due to streaming services and social media.
If we don’t know what to do with our leisure – if we don’t know how to occupy it, work it, or use it rightly – or if we prefer compulsory, paid obligations and passive distractions in its place, we are essentially admitting that we are uncomfortable with our most prized possession, that of freedom, and incapable of exercising its most direct corollary, that of free choice.
As we continue, hopefully, to earn back our time with modern technological advancements, we should start considering how we plan to use it.
Becoming an amateur – at one or many things – is a good place to start.
When you think of the word amateur, what comes to mind?
Is it a dynamic, engaged “Renaissance Man” willing to engage himself in any and all activities providing sustained engagement and challenge?
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Or is it the poorly skilled, unmotivated delinquent, unable to make the leap from hobbyist to the big leagues?
More often than not, we think of the latter.
If there is a single word which best encapsulates our collective departure from the true meaning and purpose of leisure, it is the word amateur.
There was a time when being an amateur did not carry such a negative, condescending connotation. Rather than focusing on the “glass half empty” characteristics of someone who is performing at a level clearly short of professional standards, it focused on those who were passionate about a subject or skill for its own sake, for the “thrill of experience” rather than accomplishment or recognition. In other words, to be labeled an amateur was to be recognized as the opposite of boring.
The Latin root of amateur, amare, “to love”, indicates its original meaning: someone who truly loved what he was doing. A similar word, dilettante, from the Latin delectare, “to find delight in”, is finding a similar fate – rather than describing someone who intrinsically enjoys what she is doing, it now carries a heavy dose of judgment in the form of superficiality and lack of commitment.
In his book Flow, renowned psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (pronounced Me-High Cheek-Sent-Me-High) discusses the sad fate of both words, pointing out that our “warped” attitude towards achievement in physical or mental activities has removed almost entirely from societal debate the subjective gains from a given hobby or pursuit, focusing instead purely on standards of success and advancement. As a result, we are losing the vocabulary intended to capture the value of experience for its own sake, preferring instead to
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view activities purely from a career or economic standpoint. Our appreciation for the intrinsic is now overshadowed by the extrinsic.
Basic, modern economics is partly to blame for this – we are constantly reminded of the “opportunity cost” of leisurely pursuits in comparison to paid ones. Why would a lawyer spend a day fixing his own car –pursuing his amateur interests as a mechanic – when he could simply pay someone else to do so while logging a few extra billable hours over the phone? Time is money: whatever number of paid labor hours he would save by doing it himself are far outweighed by the professional, billable hours he might gain, so he naturally shouldn’t bother dabbling in such amateur pursuits.
Yet this purely economic argument “presumes the fungibility of human experience: all our activities are equivalent or interchangeable once they are reduced to the abstract currency of clock time, and its wage correlate.” It removes from the debate the value of a spirit of inquiry, love of learning, and desire to be “a master of one’s own stuff.” Furthermore, it degrades self-reliance to a status bordering on irrelevance.
Most importantly, though, it fails to acknowledge what the spirit of amateurism, and the spirit of leisure, truly offers, which is an intrinsic pleasure and satisfaction derived from a freely chosen activity which pushes our mind or body to its limits, requiring a focus and attention in which total, single-minded absorption is a necessary prerequisite. It is this “order of consciousness”, or peace of mind, which causes us to come back again and again to these activities, those which provide no benefit outside of what is contained within the activity itself, even when the activity might be considered challenging, exhausting, or even dangerous. As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi points out:
The Bell View "Dreams" Page 48 Spring 2024
Contrary to what we usually believe, moments like these, the best moments in our lives, are not the passive, receptive, relaxing times – although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.[5]
Because we treat work as our dominant obligation, and because work consumes a disproportionate amount of our time and energy in today’s modern economy, most of us presume that we simply don’t have the ability, energy, or time to take on leisure activities in which we play an active role. While this is partly true, much of it is based on a false assumption regarding the human brain.
The human brain is not a muscle and does not need muscle-like recovery. In fact, the brain is the most advanced and complex organ in the entire human body, which in and of itself is arguably one of the most complex creations on the planet. It contains around 86 billion neurons which can communicate with each other to form circuits and share information, yet most of us allow the many of those neurons and circuits to go unused, preferring now instead to passively consume mindless digital media during any and every “in-between” moment of our waking hours. Presuming that our brains are “too tired” to function after hours of engagement, which is common with muscles, is quite frankly a myth and much less common with organs. As Arnold Bennett states in his book How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, “one of the chief things which my typical man has to learn is that the mental faculties are capable of continuous hard activity; they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change – not rest, except in sleep.”
Winston Churchill agreed. In his essay Painting as a Pastime, he describes the many remedies recommended for the “avoidance of worry and mental overstrain” for those of us with stressful jobs, duties, or
responsibilities. Exercise, repose, travel and retreat are just some of the ones he mentions, all of them valid in their own right and in the right context. To Churchill, though, the most important element of them all was change.
For Churchill, amateur pursuits resulted in the development of hobbies (at least two or three of which he recommends “to be really happy and really safe”), which to him were the only reliable antidote to the “convulsive grasp” of worry. To truly combat worry, which he defines as when “the mind catches hold of something and will not let it go,” we should occupy our attention with an engaging skill or interest, one which ideally directs “both eye and hand” to be most effective. Otherwise, it is pointless to attempt to convince the mind to abandon worrisome thoughts. As he summarizes later, “the stronger the will, the more futile the task.”
For Churchill, the amateaur pursuit was painting. And as he describes clearly, the benefits were endless:
Inexpensive independence, a mobile and perennial pleasure apparatus, new mental food and exercise, the old harmonies and symmetries in an entirely different language, an added interest to every common scene, an occupation for every idle hour, an unceasing voyage of entrancing discovery – these are high prizes.
Amateur pursuits are anything with autotelic rewards - gardeners braving summer heat, rock climbers ascending a new wall, parents experimenting with new recipes, or painters starting a new canvas. Oddly enough, as soon as the self-contained, intrinsic purpose of these activities is replaced with extrinsic ones, such as a paycheck and a livelihood, motivation and satisfaction can often plummet.
The point of these amateur pursuits is not to compete with professionals, but to harness the power of a freely chosen discipline and apply and extend one’s mental and physical skills at a time and place of one’s choosing.
Often described as getting into “the zone”, these experiences create the “order in consciousness” which many psychologists now describe as the “optimal experience” or “flow” state in which one loses all concept of self and time and is instead deeply focused on the activity at hand. When done properly, we find that we simply don’t have enough attention during these activities to allow ourselves to worry about the past or the future or any other irrelevant thoughts or stimuli. And when done repeatedly, we are able to voluntarily silence the “voice in our head” and eliminate our natural predisposition for unhealthy notions of regret, worry, and resentment on a recurring basis.
We literally forget about ourselves and any problems or anxieties we may be ruminating on during these activities, and the ability to do so is incredibly satisfying. The key seems to be finding enough time to build as many of these activities into our daily existence.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently went on the record, again, with his prediction that artificial intelligence will bring about a 3.5 day work week within our lifetime. Bill Gates claims that the work week will be three days or less. And Elon Musk questions the need for humans to work in the future altogether.
What will we do with all that time?
Using 20th century American history as a guide, we should probably prepare ourselves to accept leisure’s new freedoms and actively defend
against the free market’s ability to invent new ways to waste our time, create new products for us to consume, and advertise new passive commercial recreations.
More specifically, schools will need to revamp their mission and purpose to teach students, once again, “the worthy use of leisure”, which lay at the heart of their etymological roots: “school”, and “scholarship”, after all, are derived from the Greek word for leisure, scholé. Colleges will have to rediscover the classical purpose of a true liberal arts education, which is the practical need to teach free people the arts of living free, rather than obsessively focusing on preparing them for a life of work, and work alone. Businesses and corporations will have to acknowledge that the “final, best achievement” of the free market is not perpetual economic growth, eternal job creation, and everlasting consumerism, but creating “a new type of civilization” resting on technologically advanced, “automated drudgery” in which “how to make a living becomes less important than how to live.”
These sorts of changes will be hard and protracted, if they come at all. In the meantime, perhaps we can learn, once again, to embrace our inner amateur.
1. Benjamin Hunnicutt, Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream
2. Ibid
3. The Works of William Ellery Channing
4. Derek Thompson. Why Americans Care About Work So Much. The Atlantic
5. Courtney Vinopal. “High Earning Men are Cutting Back on Their Working Hours. The Wall Street Journal.
6. Michael Easter. The Comfort Crisis.
7. Matthew Crawford. Shop Class as Soulcraft
8. Walter S. Gifford. “Days of Drudgery Will Soon Be Over.” American Magazine 56. (November 1928)
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The Bell View "Dreams"
After 17 of years in hibernation, Gretchen Grenier ’26 and Cate Jacobs ’25 decided to revive Dunn School’s Literary Magazine, The Bell View. The Bell View was founded in 1998 to showcase Dunn's community's creativity, but before this year, the last publication was in 2007. This revitalized Bell View will continue to be a compilation of student and faculty writing, photography, and artwork but now each issue will be focused on a theme. Its goal is to inspire and highlight Dunn students’ and faculty’s creativity, as well as to connect the community through expression.