I have a friend who tells me that she travels in imagination. That she has seen, with her mind’s eye, many places of this world.
She has seen only a few, has travelled, in fact, only a few places. She’s been a few times by plane, she’s seen the Paris she knew from her imagination, we’ve been together to Prague, in search of the alchemists of old.
But she read a lot. She still reads a lot. She translated books, wrote, interpreted, commented on Sanskrit texts.
For her, the various cities of the world are as she has projected them in her mind, through books, art albums, her own vision.
For her, it’s more valuable to read, to imagine adventure, to find oneself in a state of laziness from time to time, than to fret about being on the road all the time. It is this state of laziness, of boredom, that gives room for creativity, for ideas, to surface.
Newton discovered gravity when he was lying in his garden. That’s when he saw an apple falling; not just any apple, the one that would bring the law of universal gravity.
Archimedes was taking a bath when he discovered the law that a body submerged in water loses some of its weight, equal to the volume of water displaced (the principle that also bears his name).
In my first year at Insead, Professor Manfred Kets de Vries would give us a two-and-a-half hour break to go for a walk in the forest at Fontainebelau, to talk about whatever we wanted, whatever was on our minds after class. It was a way of urging us to acquire this skill of clarifying our ideas, of letting ourselves get a little lost, precisely in order to gather ourselves, to save ourselves.
Beyond the status, money, and sense of usefulness that everyday activities bring us, an ounce of boredom, of “dolce vita”, moments when we light a candle, read something, listen to music, stroll past flowering linden trees, sit on a Parisian terrace and watch the spectacle of the world, all these disconnect the spirit from the hustle and bustle of the world and can bring it unforeseen gifts.