“Idleness is the mother of all sin.” This is what we were raised to believe, this is what we think of when we pile one activity onto the next, when we put ourselves to the grind of midterms season, when we work ourselves into giving anything and everything we have into making every second count. In the words of a person who I admire greatly: “Oh I see, you’re a maximizer.”
Taking four classes, working a part-time job (or two), engaging in three extracurriculars, applying for summer internships, study abroad programs and fellowships, maintaining a healthy social life and sleeping an adequate amount every now and then — sound familiar? In any context other than Yale, giving that answer to “so, what do you do?” would invoke a burst of laughter.
But, as Bertrand Russell said in his book “In Praise of Idleness” much more eloquently than I ever could: “What is needed in our very complex modern society is calm consideration, with readiness to call dogmas in question and freedom of mind to do justice to the most diverse points of view.”
We need to take a minute to stop and smell the roses: go apple picking at the Yale farm, plant a tulip at Berkeley’s annual event or just spend an evening having hot chocolate in our common room. We need to spend a Saturday afternoon starting at the ceiling, listening to old songs and wondering where our life is heading. We need to miss brunch on a Sunday morning because we’ve been drifting in and out of Morpheus’ arms, in that sweet intersection between slumber and reality.
Being idle and doing nothing is the opposite of exciting. It’s boring.
Idleness is a virtue. It has as much to do with doing nothing as it does with finding harmony with oneself and experiencing life unhurriedly, exactly as it unfolds. If only there were more of it in the world.
We measure the success of a nation not by the happiness of its people but by a single metric, the population of its unemployed. It matters not whether the work is conducive to the human condition or whether the end product or service actually fulfills the hierarchical needs of the individual.
Idleness is about reclaiming human dignity. It has as much to do with doing nothing as it does with finding harmony with oneself and experiencing life unhurriedly, exactly as it unfolds.