Bordmagazin_August_2017

113
Words
Lydia Polzer
Illustrations
Benjamin Flouw
Properly lazy
Everyone’s always busy: at work, at home,
on holiday. Is doing nothing a skill in
danger of extinction? We tried it out
A Fiat crosses the square at a leisurely
pace. A corpulent Italian man sits alone,
reading a newspaper at a cafe table on
the church square. I’m sitting two tables
down from him. It’s 9.12am and I’ve been
doing nothing for precisely two-and-ahalf
minutes.
Doing nothing is exactly why I’ve
come to Conversano, an hour’s car ride
north of Brindisi on Italy’s south-east
coast. What better place to take it easy
than a peaceful little town in southern
Italy? Idleness is something we rarely
have time for nowadays. We’ve got to
maximise our waking hours, because
YOLO (you only live once). So we go to
tango classes, train for our next triathlon,
monitor our calorie consumption, book
our next holiday online, wash the car,
take up pottery – and that’s before our
workday’s even started.
Björn Kern (39), author of the book Das
Beste, was wir tun können, ist nichts (“The
Best Thing We Can Do Is Nothing”) sums
up modern society’s plight: “The insanity
of multitasking used to be reserved for top
managers but today it’s expected of every
mere mortal.” We’re even becoming less
idle on holiday, where we get up extra
early to go diving with whale sharks, do
sunrise yoga or stroke turtles at dawn.
It’s now 9.17am and I’m restless. I’ve
ordered a croissant but now regret having
opted for jam instead of chocolate. Would
I have been better off going to the cafe
with a view of the old square? Am I in the
right place for doing nothing? The clock
is still ticking and I’m finding it hard to
let go of the routine of everyday life.
Father and son Karlheinz and
Jonas Geißler, time researchers and
co-founders of the time consultancy
institute Times and More, recently
published a book called Time Is Honey.
They see the invention of the mechanical
clock during the late Middle Ages as the
start of many modern problems. “Today’s
much-bemoaned time-decision difficulties
have only existed since we’ve had to
decide between the clock and the Sun,
the chiming bell and the crowing cockerel,”
they say. It’s only since clocks have
existed that time can be gained, spared
or even wasted. Time Is Honey reads like
a call to experience the full extent of the
day instead of counting hours.
One section is headed Leisure and
Idleness – on Doing Sweet Nothing. But
how exactly does doing sweet nothing
work? Karlheinz Geißler (73) told me
to pick a cafe on the local piazza, sit at
an outside table and order a cappuccino
and brioche, then just sit there watching
the world go by for two whole hours. I
rebelled against the clock right from the
start: I only started doing nothing an