More about Winston Churchill →
A public leader, beset by the weight of decision and controversy, cannot find renewal in passive idleness. To merely stop working, Churchill insists, is to invite those same anxieties and preoccupations to follow one into supposed leisure, haunting the quiet hours with unresolved dilemmas and nagging responsibilities. The mind, accustomed to perpetual engagement with affairs of state, cannot simply switch itself off like an electric lamp.
Churchill’s remedy lies in what might be termed the doctrine of constructive distraction. One must actively redirect the faculties toward an entirely different sphere of endeavor—in his case, the canvas and palette. This change of scene, this deliberate shift from one mode of concentration to another, provides the mind with authentic relief. The intense focus required by painting, the absorption in questions of color, composition, and form, crowds out the political anxieties that would otherwise maintain their grip.
Here is practical wisdom born of hard experience. Churchill discovered what modern psychology has since confirmed: that restoration comes not through vacancy but through transformation, not through emptiness but through different fullness. In painting, he found not escape but engagement of a redemptive kind.
“If you cannot read them [books], at any rate handle them and, as it were, fondle them. Peer into them. Let them fall open where they will. Read on from the first sentence that arrests the eye. Then turn to another. Make a voyage of discovery, taking soundings of uncharted seas. Set them back on their shelves with your own hands. Arrange them on your own plan, so that if you do not know what is in them, you at least know where they are. If they cannot be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances. If they cannot enter the circle of your life, do not deny them at least a nod of recognition.”
Winston Churchill
“Go out into the sunlight and be happy with what you see.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“To be really happy and really safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“Painting is a companion with whom one may hope to walk a great part of life’s journey.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“Happy are the painters, for they shall not be lonely. Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep them company to the end, or almost to the end, of the day.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source“Many remedies are suggested for the avoidance of worry and mental overstrain by persons who, over prolonged periods, have to bear exceptional responsibilities and discharge duties upon a very large scale. Some advise exercise, and others, repose. Some counsel travel, and others, retreat. Some praise solitude, and others, gaiety. No doubt all these may play their part according to the individual temperament. But the element which is constant and common in all of them is Change.”
— Winston Churchill Primary source• Title: Painting as a Pastime
• Author: Winston Churchill
• Type: Book
• Publisher: Charles Scribner
• Publication time: 1948
• Publication place: New York, United States
The Emperor’s Old Clothes
Why England Slept (1940)
John F. Kennedy
Live and Let Die (April 5, 1954)
Ian Fleming
Moonraker (April 5, 1955)
Ian Fleming