Friday, March 27, 2020 // The Statement
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I
arrived at the University of Michigan in Febru-
ary as a visiting Ph.D. researcher from the Uni-
versity of Southampton in the United Kingdom.
When I departed for Ann Arbor, the spread of the novel
coronavirus was not so critical as it is today. There were
about 32,000 cases worldwide, with only three in Eng-
land and 12 in the United States. Even in my home coun-
try of Italy, now the global epicenter of COVID-19, only
three cases were reported. To me, the situation did not
seem particularly worrisome: We were still one month
behind the World Health Organization’s declaration of a
pandemic and the virus seemed destined to be contained
to the Western Pacific region.
Indeed, as I first set foot in this little city, Ann Arbor,
home of one of the most beautiful universities, my mind
was elsewhere. I was full of wonder and expectations
at the possibilities of new experiences and friendships.
A blanket of snow, not so common in England, covered
the city, reminding me of the wooded landscapes back
home in Italy. At the University, there were a lot of nice
and friendly people all around: at the libraries, the labo-
ratory and Pierpoint Commons. I was also making plans
with my Italian girlfriend to come to visit me, so that we
could admire, for the first time, the views of the Great
Lakes, the architectural city of Chicago and other beauti-
ful attractions nearby.
But then, only a couple of weeks after my arrival, the
coronavirus outbreak spiked in Italy and Europe — and
the world began to shutter itself. Suddenly, everyone real-
ized that to save ourselves, we needed to overcome our
social instinct and desire to stay together — we needed to
stay apart from each other, from our family, our friends
and our loved ones.
At the University, the libraries, classrooms and cafes
in which I liked to spend most of my time became very
different places. I couldn’t hear the cheerful, background
chatter while waiting in line for my coffee. If I went to
the library, a doomsday feeling ran down my spine as I
saw empty seats and aisles. In all the buildings, class-
room doors were fixed open, giving a perspective of an
ominous future.
It also became clear that my girlfriend would not be
able to come to visit me any time soon, and I started to
worry about my family who lives in Milan — located at
the center of the peninsula’s outbreak.
Dramatically, our social structure was turned upside
down in just a few days, establishing a new normal. It
is clear that we can’t go on with our usual routines any-
more: There are no more colleagues to chat with, no
more drinks at the cafe, nights out to make new friends
or weekends to visit our parents.
Nonetheless, people have found creative ways to adapt
to this completely new reality. My colleagues and friends
at Southampton University created group chats in which
we can support each other: sharing our newly-created
workout routines, proposing daily writing and creative
prompts — like rewriting a chapter of our favorite chil-
dren’s book or drawing a cartoon strip of our day — and
giving suggestions on what music to listen to. Anything
to keep us thinking positively and productively.
Indeed, with so much idle time away from work, it is
now not as cool as before to waste time laying on the sofa
watching thousands of TV series and scrolling through
endless Instagram posts. As Jerome Klapka Jerome nice-
ly put it in his book “Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow”:
“It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one
has plenty of work to do. There is no fun in doing noth-
ing when you have nothing to do. Wasting time is merely
an occupation then, and a most exhausting one. Idleness,
like kisses, to be sweet must be stolen.”
It seems that in this quarantine, we have found new
ways to stay together, support each other and rediscover
ourselves — maybe even more than we did before the out-
break — when many of us were too concerned with our
smartphones to engage with each other.
Now, people have rediscovered board games or found
out about inner creativity that they didn’t even know they
had, building the strangest instruments to put up against
the virus outbreak.
One man in Italy fabricated portable cardboard into
the form of a spaceship so that when worn, it would keep
you the required one-meter distance from other people.
In Rome, people decided to do a flash mob by singing and
playing guitars from their windows.
Nobody knows how long this outbreak will last and
how much time it will take to go back to our previous
routines. If I will not be able to explore Ann Arbor and
the great land- and city-scapes of this state for at least a
while, I can and am still having a meaningful experience
in this city. The extra time at home gave me the oppor-
tunity to reassess my daily life. I have finally found the
courage to begin those activities I always wanted to do
but that I kept postponing: daily workouts, yoga, medi-
tation, reading, video calls with my parents and friends.
This, in turn, has helped me increase my productivity as
a researcher.
A few months ago, if anybody had suggested shut-
ting myself in my house for a month as a way to improve
my life routine, I would have never believed them. Yet,
thanks to the mutual support of all the people around the
world, it worked.
Riccardo Marrocchio is a biophysicist and visiting
researcher at U-M from Rome, Italy. He can be reached
at ricmich@umich.edu.
statement
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | MARCH 27 , 2020
BY RICCARDO MARROCCHIO, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
When idleness becomes sweet
ILLUSTRATION BY ERIN RUARK