The value of doing nothing together
Unstructured time is precious. Neuroscience has found that it is the alternating focus on learning and letting the mind freewheel that we learn best. Having space to think is good for us and helps us think better.
An increasing desire for personal independence, living alone and surviving independently, coupled with the sudden and worsening cost of living crisis means that, for most people, our time is becoming increasingly structured and eroding our ability to connect with one another. Students have been observed to increasingly choose structured activities with direct social or financial benefits over simply hanging out together. While doing lots of things can be beneficial, so can remembering that you are fundamentally a human being, rather than a human doing. Just being - alone or with others - has profound value in and of itself. We were built to just be a lot of the time. Being with other people without pressure to achieve anything is time when we connect with one another and experience what it is to be fully human. It is then that we experience all that we are and build community.
"To hang out is an assertion that individuals should have the freedom, funds, and capacity to dictate their own experience. It’s time we treat this assertion as a defining political issue."
~ James Coe, 2022
"But then, if we do not ever take time, how can we ever have time?”
~The Merovingian (Frenchman), from The Matrix 2: Reloaded (2003)
A pressing social problem
Our time is being increasingly commodified, time spent drawing breath feeling increasingly unaffordable as the cost of living and an increasingly competitive job market squeezing our previously free time to socialise and relate to one another on our own terms, to exist in the moment and maintain our health.
We are threatened with being reduced from human beings – who by definition are fundamentally allowed just to be - into units of economic wealth generation that will never see the vast majority of the wealth they are to generate, and no longer afforded the luxury of hanging out with friends, sharing meals, and harmlessly existing as we have done since the dawn of time. According to some thinkers, our right to hang out – vital to developing and maintaining our very humanity.
Where to turn
Libraries are a great place to hang out and connect with others. Expand your network of friends, restore yourself through welcome conversation, settle, and relax between bursts of fruitful activity.
The cost of living can make free time feel like a luxury, but what we give up is very difficult to recapture, and there is a real risk that free time might once again become a privilege out of our reach. That would be extremely harmful - as is recognised in Gestalt psychology, half of life is digesting and resting (the other half being moving on things you want and achieving to meet your needs) - and that balance is important.
It's probably around this time that I should point out the Relaxation Corner where you can find comfortable soft seating and our collection of Quick Choice reading for pleasure books. You can also stream audiobooks, ebooks and borrow print books for free from your local public library. You can remain a member of your local public library back home and join Portsmouth Public Libraries as a student here.