When can we stop?

I like making things and I want to do my work well. Still, I know the feeling that every quiet hour ought to become another useful hour. Even rest can start to feel like preparation for tomorrow’s work.

In Psychopolitics, Byung-Chul Han describes a form of power that no longer has to order us to produce at every turn. We learn to treat ourselves as projects to improve, and carry the demand inside us. When we cannot keep up, it is easy to blame our discipline instead of asking who set the pace and who benefits from it.

That is why I am uneasy when mindfulness or yoga is offered only as a way to manage stress and return to the same conditions ready to work harder. Both can be valuable in their own right. But care for ourselves should be more than maintenance for productivity. A problem shaped by work and society cannot be solved by each person alone.

In The Spirit of Hope, Han asks how hope can reopen a future that fear has reduced to mere survival. Hope can also move us to change our shared conditions. In The Scent of Time, he defends the art of lingering. Together, these books make me ask what kind of life work should leave possible.

Bruegel holds work, food and rest within the same landscape. The people in it do not exist only as workers: the day also contains company, sleep and a world stretching beyond the field.

I came to Denmark partly in search of a different rhythm: one in which I can leave my email alone for a whole weekend without guilt, and a parent can leave at three to pick up a child and spend the afternoon with them. Time for friends, family, a hobby, a walk or a conversation should not have to justify itself by making us more productive later.

That room to stop needs more than individual resolve. It depends on how we arrange work, care and the time we owe one another. I want to be able to stop, and to notice the small moments while they are here. That is a freedom worth making possible for more people.