What remains when we don’t have to function for a while?

We are remarkably good at breaking our days into tasks.

Get up. Work. Reply. Shop. Organise. Finish one more thing. And whenever a free half-hour appears, we usually find something to fill it with.

Sometimes I wonder when “I am doing things” turned into “I have to keep functioning”.

We like measuring a day by what we achieved

“Was it a good day?”

We often answer with a list.

What was finished. What worked. What we managed to do.

That is understandable. Crossing things off feels good. It only becomes a problem when a day without a visible result starts to feel like a bad day.

Not everything valuable can be crossed off.

A conversation. Rest. Thinking. Listening to music. Looking out of the window. Going to bed earlier. None of those produce a very impressive to-do list.

Your value does not begin only when there is something finished on the table at the end of the day.

der uNi

A pause is not a system error

I think we sometimes treat rest like an interruption.

As if the original plan were to keep going forever and the body or mind had this annoying habit of becoming tired.

But rest belongs to life just as much as movement does.

Music is not made only of notes either. Without the spaces between them, it would be hard to listen to.

Maybe everyday life works the same way.

What remains when nothing is being asked of us?

That is the more interesting question.

When nobody needs an answer. When no message is flashing. When nothing needs to be finished.

What do we do then?

Do we immediately reach for the phone? Find another task? Or can we be there for a moment without needing to produce something?

I am not always particularly good at it. When there are many ideas in my head, doing nothing can quickly feel as if I am wasting time.

But perhaps time is not wasted because it was not productive.

Perhaps we lose more of it when we see every moment only as a passage to the next task.

An evening with no goal

Maybe we can try it on a small scale.

No grand wellness programme. No optimised break with a schedule.

Just an hour in which nothing has to become better.

Coffee or tea. Music. A walk. A book. Or genuinely nothing at all.

Not as a reward for having worked hard enough beforehand.

But because we are people, not machines designed for permanent operation.

When did you last do something that had no purpose other than being good for you?

Marco, der uNi