SS_08/14 → Notes from Conversas Vadias #8 – Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Fernando Alves
Notes from Conversas Vadias #8
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Fernando Alves
Originally broadcast by RTP on 26 April 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.
Few words have been more misunderstood than idleness.
Today, it usually means laziness.
Doing nothing.
Avoiding responsibility.
Agostinho meant something entirely different.
He called it vadiagem.
Not as the absence of work.
But as the presence of freedom.
At one point he says something wonderfully unexpected.
The interesting thing is to wander a lot… and talk very little.
That sentence stayed with me.
Because wandering isn’t the opposite of productivity.
It’s often the beginning of it.
Some of the best ideas don’t appear while we’re trying to solve a problem.
They appear while walking.
Driving.
Cooking.
Looking out of a train window.
Doing absolutely nothing that seems useful.
Modern life has become remarkably efficient at eliminating those moments.
Every silence gets filled.
Every queue becomes scrolling.
Every walk becomes a podcast.
Every empty space becomes another opportunity to consume.
We’re constantly occupied.
Rarely available.
Agostinho saw those as two very different things.
Later in the conversation, he makes another distinction that feels increasingly relevant.
There is work…
…and there is occupation.
Work is what obligation demands.
Occupation is what your nature asks for.
Those two occasionally overlap.
Most of the time, they don’t.
Perhaps that’s why so many people feel exhausted despite accomplishing so much.
They’re producing.
But they’re no longer inhabiting what they’re producing.
Towards the end of the episode, Agostinho offers an invitation rather than an argument.
I would invite people to wander through the mystery.
Not to solve it.
Not to explain it.
Simply to remain inside it.
That may be one of the most countercultural ideas imaginable today.
We’re taught that uncertainty is a flaw.
That every question deserves an immediate answer.
That every mystery should eventually become information.
Agostinho seems to believe the opposite.
Some things lose their beauty the moment they’re completely explained.
Perhaps wisdom isn’t reducing mystery.
Perhaps it’s becoming comfortable enough to live alongside it.
Maybe that’s what vadiagem really is.
Not escaping reality.
But moving slowly enough that reality finally has a chance to catch up with you.
Original source
Conversas Vadias — Episode 8 → https://www.fernandomoreira.me/conversas-vadias-episodio-8-com-fernando-alves/
Agostinho da Silva in conversation with Fernando Alves.
Broadcast by RTP on 26 April 1990.
Available through the RTP Archives.