What's striking here is that Aquinas, a medieval theologian obsessed with rigorous thinking, sanctioned levity not as a guilty pleasure but as a *necessity* for the mind's proper functioning—the way a runner needs rest days. He wasn't being permissive; he was being physiological. This matters because it gives intellectual permission to anyone who feels they should be productive every waking hour: a parent scrolling memes at midnight or a scholar telling jokes between serious conversations isn't procrastinating but maintaining the very apparatus required for deep thought. The ancient world understood something we've nearly forgotten—that the mind, like a bow, loses its tension if never relaxed.