EDITOR’S LETTER
Even if I try hard, I can’t remember the last time I found myself doing nothing. And by nothing I mean nothing at all. Not even starting a compulsive scrolling session, updating the mailbox or listening to a podcast in the background, as if to replicate the pattern of those mothers who leave the TV on just because “hearing a few voices makes a lot of company”. In recent years we have established a conflicting relationship, to say the least, with our free time, well outlined by French theologian Blaise Pascal in his work entitled PensĂ©es: “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. A statement that shows our total inability to interrupt routine. Although the lockdown strongly reminded us of the good reasons for leaving “that room”, spending moments of emptiness does not necessarily mean giving up everything that is out there (or falling behind those who are continuing to run).
The anxiety that arises from these circumstances has been baptized as “leisurephobia”. That sweet doing nothing, which our grandparents saw as a gift, waiting impatiently for Sunday to relax and rest, is now perceived as fear. Having no plans generates feelings of guilt and frustration for not using our time in the right way. At all times, in any situation, we must do something at all costs. A sort of terror of the void that we tend to fight with schedules full of commitments, with a routine capable of reassuring us, translating anxiety into an impulse to action. A drug that has a serious side effect: the routine and schematic approach we impose on our life plunges everything we do into the abyss of equivalence. No matter what we have decided to fill the time with, what matters is not to be alone. The result is an attitude that protects from anxieties by creating repetitive actions, the result of which is the impossibility of stopping to think. We probably do not realize that this repetitiveness, rather than representing a defensive strategy, has become our condemnation, our “Sisyphean fatigue”, very similar to the punishment inflicted on the protagonist of the myth, locked up in Hades and forced to carry to the top to a mountain a boulder that inexorably falls as soon as it touches the summit, a symbol of any useless undertaking, destined to vanish as soon as it is completed. A “free condemned man” according to Albert Camus, aware of his fate.
Today we have given up the possibility of stopping and thinking in favor of a schematic repetition that makes us feel safe. Continuing to work chasing the weekend, to then saturate all our hours until Sunday evening, booking holidays in tourist villages, where following programs decided by others gives the feeling of having carried out the assigned task correctly. The breathtaking race that we continue to impose on ourselves is just another way of pushing the stone, worried about getting to the top quickly. Technologies and the world of the web are developing the illusion that everything can be done and that there is no room for dead moments, attributing importance to our delusional pace. And instead, even if they scare us, we should accept emptiness, because they put us in contact with ourselves, with our emotions. Stopping is a great way to enjoy rest and assess whether we are going on the right path. It is the hole in the agenda that represents the most suitable therapy, because it confronts us with what frightens us the most: having to give direction to what we do. Let’s not forget that boredom activates the right hemisphere of our brain, the one concerning intuition and creativity. It is as if doing nothing frees us from the toxins accumulated in months of commitments and stress, from the chains of time.
To learn to live better, we should learn to get bored more.
Davide Fioraso
