“Just being active impoverishes your experience. It continues ever the same. Whoever is not capable of stopping and pausing has no access to what is altogether different. Experience transforms. It interrupts the repetition of the ever same. You do not become more susceptible to the making of experiences by becoming more active. Rather, what is needed is a particular kind of passivity. You need to let yourself be concerned with that which evades the activity of the acting subject…” (104).

I’ve recently found a favorite writer, a philosopher named Byung-Chul Han. I don’t recall when or how I came across his work, but it was likely the title of his first book, The Burnout Society that grabbed my attention. One of the roles I expect of philosophy is help seeing things differently. When it comes to something like profound exhaustion and burnout, I am looking for an understanding more accurate or profound than being “really, really” tired.

There seems to be limitless content around his idea of time management. I’ve been spending some time with some. My recent dives moved from Time Smart to a couple Doire Clark books, and then Do Nothing after I saw her at the National Book Festival in 2022. At some point in here, I pre-orded the paperback of the book Time Management for Mortals.

Who put this here!? Who put this chair right here?

All action and effort are neutralized by futility under this burden. One is lost to the monotony of wondering why the stone needs to be rolled at all. This myth is hell for those who need progress. I couldn’t help but think of this while I stood in front of Leonardo Drew’s “Untitled #25” at the Rubell Museum.