Condense, concentrate. Reduce in size, maximize in potential. 1,001 pieces of information on a microchip, 1,001 peppermint leaves in a single drop of essential oil. Not a scroll of parchment, but one killer argument. A headline.

Newspaper bosses have always been the ones to decide the headlines – because the headline is what gets read first, shaping the attitude with which we read everything that follows. It’s what sticks. What gets passed on.

Nobody goes to war with a thermos of watery coffee. You take the concentrate.

That’s good. It’s efficient. It’s powerful.
But it’s not everything.

Because then, what happens to the pages and pages of poetry that emerge from long, leisurely walks? To the ridiculous play-fights with no real purpose, where nobody wins and everyone ends up with aching abs from laughing? What about reading enormous novels and endless articles, word by word, and reading a beautiful sentence twice – maybe three times?

Marie is a heart surgeon. She loves condensed milk and double espresso, and needs both for maximum concentration during an operation. That’s no place for detours. No digressions. No discoveries. Every second counts.

But when her work is done, she likes to walk home, leaving every shortcut.

She walks along the lake, even though it takes longer. Maybe she stops at a rosebush because one of the roses is blooming with such absurd extravagance that she wants to know whether it smells as spectacular as it looks – and nearly sticks her nose into a rose chafer in the process …

… or maybe it reminds her that she hasn’t listened to Guns N’ Roses in ages, even though she loves them. And “Guns” reminds her of her favorite shooter. Suddenly, she’s in the mood for rock and a joystick.

By the lake, she feeds the ducks. She watches them fight over a piece of bread: one arrives too late, another shamelessly snatches everything, while a third apparently has absolutely no idea where the bread landed. Maybe she stands there for five minutes. Maybe twenty. It doesn’t matter.

As a perfectly engineered exercise-and-relaxation routine, she could have done 40 minutes of Muscle Pump and 20 minutes of massage in the building next to the hospital. Then taken a taxi home. Exercise: done. Relaxation: done. Journey home: done. Efficient. Condensed. Optimized.

But at some point, enough with condensing and concentrating.

What if we just turn somewhere? Wander around and see what happens?

That’s neither wasting time nor optimizing it.

The text could stop here. Nicely condensed. But it doesn’t.

It ends here.