THE IMPORTANCE OF DOWNTIME

10:30 a.m.. Standing in the subway, rocked by the carriage’s motion, I realize how automatically I rescue my phone from my pocket. I’m still have plenty of time to interrupt the thumb’s mechanical motion that’s already sliding to activate the beast. There is always something new waiting, a feed, a post, a tweet, an email. Always something to do: send a message, check likes and shares, notifications regarding this and that, to take a pick at a recommended link, or to finish another level on candy crush, I may already have lives again…

It’s virtually unlimited. Wanting, I may eternally stimulate my mental “robot”, making the most of each break, each awaiting time, converting each distraction into pseudo-usefulness, always searching for something to execute, buttons to press, things to make the most of, something to do and engage myself with, like a slot-machine addiction, will there be a prize this time?

Some days it amuses me,  I won’t deny it. But there are days when this no need for permission mechanics almost sickens me. The feeling of an ever elusive freedom of simply being oppresses me. Nothing else.

I resist the temptation and return the devil’s machine to my pocket and let myself slip into one of my mental silence moments. I renounce having to manage my focus. I ramble, without intending to do anything. Without planning to make the most of the hours. I let myself float in a totally dead time, dedicated to the void. I look at my watch defying the pointer to go faster, to see if it can, but it doesn’t respond – unruffled and at its own pace. I feel rich, owner of all those seconds that I waste away without criteria. Not producing a thing. Not even moving a finger. Not thinking about anything. It’s delicious.

Simultaneously, surprisingly creative thoughts start to flow. By themselves, without pushing. Even without the disturbance of preserving them or converting them to a format that could be useful. Zero influence. I let everything flow according to its own course. Around me remarkable details that often get lost in our accelerated daily routine start to emerge. I’m struck by the serenity os those watching a play, leaving to the actors the responsibility of remembering the next cue. Everything automatically taken care of. Relaxing.

“Next stop: Aliados”. It’s me, it’s here. I push myself out of the train returning to the world and returning to the automatism of thinking within a schedule, about how my day is going to go, what I have to do. At the same time, I think about how many of the most important existentialist conclusions and business ideas occur to me after these moments of mental silence. After a journey to the desert, without internet connection. Or in the sea. So many solutions and perspectives come from this wild and free diving mode, when I’m allowed to just be. So much productivity in the absence of wanting to produce. And so much peace!

I think about the rhythm of former times. About the auto-sufficient waiting. About the lazy family Sundays. About the trips that always required a phone booth search. About the strong feeling of missing a letter born from any given lazy moment. About how unreachable we were then. And about the value of that.

I ask myself if the opportunities for us to let our thinking processes self-purge, freed from stimuli, with permission to calm down, to make peace, even if it’s only for three subway stops, are eventually narrowing… after all, where does this fit, if we bio at each minute, like a flippers’ ball? If now not even on holidays we let ourselves spend at least three days offline?

Perhaps experiencing true silence won’t be necessary in the future, and maybe we’ll all gear ourselves into an automatic matrix of permanent action… without great reflections… always in robot mode, I don’t know… For now, I confess that it seems like a dangerous path to eradicate these downtimes!

Gonçalo Gil Mata