I spent 90 minutes attempting to empty my mind and slow my heartbeat at a “space out” competition. It was harder — and weirder — than I expected.
Sitting cross-legged on a pink yoga mat, enjoying a cool spring breeze from Seoul’s Han River and listening to traffic rumbling on the bridge overhead, I am trying to achieve a stony state of inactivity.
Several things are making this difficult (and amping up my heart rate): a growing ache in my shoulders, the announcer’s booming commentary, the weighty gaze of a crowd of spectators and an evolutionary instinct — passed down from our hunter-gatherer days — to stay active.
The biggest stressor: wondering how I measure up against 79 fellow contestants, all of us striving — silent, expressionless, unmoving — to be the best nothing doer of all.
This is the annual Space-Out Competition in Seoul. Part pageant and part boredom-endurance challenge, it requires participants to repose in silence for an hour and a half, with gentle interruptions every 15 minutes to have their heart rates measured. The winner is the person who achieves the highest combined score on two criteria: lowest and steadiest pulse, along with a highly subjective audience popularity vote.
I entered the competition, in May, because the idea of sitting still for a whole 90 minutes during work hours to win a trophy seemed alluringly transgressive. I was also curious about an apparent contradiction: If I tried to win, wouldn’t I necessarily lose?
