Idleness or Opportunity to Think

The Fool On The Hill

Day after day, alone on a hill
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him
They can see that he's just a fool
And he never gives an answer

But the fool on the hill
Sees the sun going down
And the eyes in his head
See the world spinning 'round

What happens when you have the time to see the world spinning round?

Soon after Isaac Newton had obtained his BA degree in August 1665, Cambridge University temporarily closed as a precaution against the Great Plague. Although he had been undistinguished as a Cambridge student, Newton's private studies at his home over the subsequent two years saw the development of his theories on calculus, optics, and the law of gravitation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton

More than 400 years ago, as epidemics raged in London, forcing theaters and other public places to shutter, William Shakespeare was busy crafting stories of kings going mad and thanes coveting power. He was, scholars believe, in the midst of an astonishingly potent creative period, one that produced some of the most extraordinary tragedies ever written — “King Lear” and “Macbeth” among them. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/great-artistic-works-during-plagues/2020/11/05/6575cac2-1d29-11eb-90dd-abd0f7086a91_story.html

After finishing his studies in 1900, Einstein could not get accepted anywhere for a teaching post. Eventually he was offered a job by his friend’s father at a Swiss patent office in 1902, where Einstein’s task was to look through inventions, check their originality, and write clear patents to protect the inventors’ new ideas. His job lasted from 1902 to 1909, during which time Einstein published his four Annus Mirabilis (miracle year) 1905 papers. Einstein described the patent office as his ‘worldly cloister’, where he ‘hatched [his] most beautiful ideas’. https://oxsci.org/einstein-at-the-patent-office/

The COVID-19 lockdown is NOT the first lockdown in recorded history.  Periods of boredom in meaningless jobs provide lots of opportunity to do other things, such as seeing the world spinning round.  If history is an example, we can look forward to what may result.