Meditation is something you purposefully do, as in you would put a daily half hour of meditation in your calendar or something. Meanwhile you cannot plan niksen

Meditation is something you purposefully do, as in you would put a daily half hour of meditation in your calendar or something. Meanwhile you cannot plan niksen, if you do it on purpose it is no longer niksen. Also, in the west, meditation is often seen as something you do to clear the mind so that you can be more productive later. Niksen has no such association in Dutch culture, it's just unproductive full stop. Note that Dutch culture is much less focused on productivity than US culture, so this does not necessarily have a negative connotation.