When it's worth wasting time

Time wasted, time gained. It happens every time we manage to regain control of this precious intangible resource, and we allow ourselves breaks, rest, play, distractions, physical and mental space for ourselves and others, the people we are connected to. When the mind finally whispers to us, almost begs us, to do nothing, absolutely nothing. When we feel the urgent need to free ourselves from the shackles of performance, efficiency, usefulness, results. And make space for ourselves and our human relationships.

A precious book, bathed in deserved success, helps us reflect on the virtuous, and even necessary, side of wasting time . Nuccio Ordine has written The Usefulness of the Useless (Bompiani editions), where, navigating philosophers and writers from antiquity to the present day, he attempts to show how the obsession with utility, synonymous with profit and gain, ends up drying up the person, impoverishing their very essence. On the contrary, by reversing the perspective, wasting time means gaining it, and above all, taking possession of one's own time , the time that others always want on the market. Always in competition with other people's time , according to the merciless law of supply and demand. Our website has repeatedly highlighted the importance of knowing how to spend time with oneself , even when idle , as well as the value of slowness and silence . We have invited parents to reflect on their children's super activities, on those children's agendas, packed with after-school commitments, from swimming to language learning, from dance to some vaguely educational activity. And we are among the promoters of a new etiquette , which also includes the conscious and free choice to turn off your cell phone, not fiddle with it, and not write or receive emails. All good opportunities to waste time , or rather, to gain it.

But rediscovering (our ancestors knew it well...) what Nuccio Ordine calls "the usefulness of the useless" is only the beginning of a journey that can also rewrite some of the cardinal points of our daily lives. The long wave of efficiency, merit, "competence," and performance anxiety has never shown any signs of receding, not even in the darkest period of lockdown. We are thus prisoners of an eternal present, chronically suppressed by the past, except in the form of asphyxiating nostalgia , and devoid of vital momentum toward the future. And in this one-way, circular dimension of time , speed becomes essential. Beware of slowing down, beware of wasting time . Even watching a sunset, abandoning oneself to the pleasures of natural spectacles, are behaviors that seem reserved for a select circle of privileged individuals. Luxuries. Like the Grand Tours, the great educational journeys of the nineteenth century, the exclusive prerogative of the European establishment. Everyone else must rush, hustle, live with the obsession that time is precious, much more than money, and to avoid wasting it, everything must have a purpose, a use.

In reality, as philosopher Henry David Thoreau wrote , " Time is merely the river I fish in." How I fish is my decision. If we could truly discover the virtues of wasting time , there would be less work for analysts: we could grasp the meaning of our lives more deeply, orient ourselves in the labyrinth of true desires, and not remain trapped in the prison of duties, including invented ones. Not having time for love, a friendship, a relationship, for a caress or a kiss, is simply a crime against ourselves. Wasting time , in this sense, means stopping, dedicating ourselves to ourselves and others, giving back space to the dimension of humanity, which can never be overwhelmed by the machine, with all its marvelous seductions. Wasting time means gaining others, not feeling alone in a world that has made solitude a condition of normality.

The dictatorship of urgency and competition, with the laws that regulate it—and never mind if some, or many, fall behind—begins its relentless propaganda during school years. What value do we want to give to education? Is it merely a tool for entering the world of work, as robustly as possible and beating the competition? Of course: having a job requires good studies, that's undeniable. But reducing studies to the possibility of subsequently finding a good job is a step backward, an abdication of the person, and makes a person as small as an ant. The word school derives from the Greek skolè , meaning leisure, free time , "pleasant use of one's own strengths, especially spiritual ones, independent of any practical need or purpose" (from the Treccani Encyclopedia). And even at school, dedicating oneself to human relationships as well as the subjects being taught, one can waste time . In the best sense of the word: to earn it.