In praise of idleness ... 2016 style.. no phone

AN academic called Carlo Rovelli has written a most unlikely best-seller. It is called Seven Brief Lessons

on Physics. He makes an excellent stab at explaining the most complicated of ideas in terms that you and I at least feel we understand. And it is peppered with stories such as the sad one about the Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzman who was so far ahead of his time with his ideas about probability that he was laughed at and as a result took his own life.

But the one I like best is about Einstein who as we all know was one of the smartest humans ever. Rovelli tells us that in his youth Einstein spent a year ‘loafing around” and points out that “you don’t get anywhere by not ‘wasting time’. Einstein figured out that he wanted to study physics and in a few short years submitted three scientific papers, each of which could have got a Nobel Prize.

I like the idea of doing nothing and have always been very good at it. Sadly, it has not produced any Nobel Prizes. I suspect it is far more beneficial mentally to do nothing for a while than to fill life with pointless business. I can think of few more pleasurable things than idling for a Sunday evening in the bath. Now that Top Gear is destroyed. I admit that while I bathe I always have a pencil and paper within reach because it is only when you have mastered true idleness that all sorts of interesting things bubble up from those parts of the brain that get supressed by things like hoovering and emails. I have always been impressed by people who can focus on what they need to do when they need to do it. It is a mark of many of those people that they do not have much time for busyness, which is pointless. They are much more attuned to intense work and its complete opposite.

I count walking and running as fairly idle things to do. I know they require some effort. But they do insulate us from the incessant electronic crap that is cluttering so much of our mental lives these days. I know it is impossible, but the idea of giving up email and returning to postcards is attractive.

Increasingly, I notice people who seem to set aside an hour a day to respond to emails. The tyranny to reply instantly is mentally exhausting. John Lennon, as usual, got it. “Everybody seems to think I’m lazy. I don’t mind, I think they’re crazy, running everywhere at such a speed…” And that was before the internet.

It is a pleasant evening. I am now retiring to the setting sun with a glass of wine, no phone, no laptop, no book, no nothing. I may fall asleep. If you call in, pour yourself a glass, but don’t expect much life out of me for a while. But when we do have a conversation I promise to listen with full attention. I think it is a better system.