"How to do nothing", an essay to discover all the secrets of the art of idleness

In ancient times one of the privileges of the rich and aristocratic classes was to have time to devote to idleness, a free and carefree sweet doing nothing that was to lead individuals to reflection, contemplation or even simple relaxation. It was idleness, for example, that led the man of letters to the composition of poems and poetry. In short, lazing around - certainly not at the tavern playing dice, of course! - it was a high, sought-after activity that distinguished the rich from the poor, the free man from the slave.

Today, on the other hand, idleness is the activity of lazzaroni, of time wasters and idleness has become synonymous with laziness. Nothing to be surprised about: we live in the time of performance, of productivity. A time in which everything must be able to be measured, counted - "How many likes today?" "How many posts?" - and, possibly, monetized. Karma of living today is that our attention is always attracted or focused on something and never free to wander, to relax and maybe regain possession of their spaces.

If, on the other hand, you want to escape - at least on occasion and at some point in your week - the pervasive myth that only what is useful has a reason for being, here is "How to do nothing" (Hoepli, 2021, pp. 248, also e-book) ironic and provocative essay by the American writer Jenny Odell.

The starting point of the book is precisely the observation of how now the most difficult thing to do is, in fact, to do nothing. There is always at least one notification from the smartphone that requires us to take action. The result is that we often feel stressed, continually tossed about from one commitment to another and, worst of all, we also feel guilty when we find ourselves happy, on a sofa, spinning our thumbs or on a bench simply observing the drawing of the branches and the color of the leaves.

Well Jenny Odell offers us some reflections that can help us change our perspective on what is really useful and what is useless. Odell, first of all, considers our attention to be the most precious - and most exploited - resource we possess. We must therefore continuously (and actively) choose how to use it without falling into the traps of the mainstream and without falling into the opposite excess, that of life as hermits or as antitechnological ascetics. Lazing, therefore, becomes an almost political action that brings the human being back to the center of the world and allows him to resist the constant stimuli to do, buy and consume that come to him from outside. Rediscovering the dolce far niente becomes an important battle of reappropriation of ourselves and of attention for the really important things: relationships, the environment, the quality of life, beauty. And speaking of beauty, given the effort with which art survives in a system that evaluates only the final result, what is at stake today is above all cultural. In fact, we run the risk of fulfilling the prophecy made about a century ago by the surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico, when he envisaged limited horizons for unproductive activities such as observation. De Chirico wrote at the time: "Given the increasingly materialistic and pragmatic orientation of our civilization, the writer, the thinker, the dreamer, the poet, the metaphysician, the observer, the soothsayer, the prophetist, the scrutinizer, the deducer, the interrogator of enigmas, the valoriser, the seer, the hunter of new songs, the selector of paintings of the highest order, etc., etc., will become anachronistic characters, destined to disappear from the surface of the globe… ". But without all these figures, all these characters, what will remain of the world? Just a few bits and a few logarithms committed to doing something very useful, but also very unhuman.

Unless you rediscover the sweetness of doing nothing ...