On the Couch: How to spot an idiot

In the olden days some time last year, reading books became a painful affair.

Until then nothing could blur my love of reading, often a book a day, once motherly and household chores were taken care of.

One retreat was an armchair big enough for me and Nitro. My beautiful pavement special pooch (RIP) would wait until I sat down and then jump up alongside me, nuzzle his bum down until we fit snugly, rest his head on my shoulder and go to sleep.

The other was the bath: the sounds from the idiot box were dulled and there was just peace, hot water, a good cuppa, some bubbles and escape to wherever I wanted to go for hours at a stretch.

Then the stretch stretched. Even with reading glasses (try those in a steamy bubble bath) my arms became too short. If it can’t be blown up to about 12 point or more, like you can on a device, it’s too damn uncomfortable for any length of time. And at some point, your arms shake from the effort, particularly if it’s a big book. Only very favourite authors are worth the effort.

This has also come at a time I’m restricted from doing my other favourite thing: cleaning, DIYing and decorating my home.

Now the couch is a refuge, but what to do? Answer: the idiot box which I spent decades mocking and pooh-poohing.

The joy of streaming means you can choose what and when to watch. Having an old-lady crush on Jack Ryan (AKA John Krasinski) I started looking for some of his other work.

And so I found The Office. All nine seasons of it. When it aired, between 2005 and 2013, I was in peak pompous anti-TV mode and stuck in a million books, so never watched it.

Just last weekend I ended my epic 201-episode mega binge-watch, sad it was over but having a higher count of deeply seared laugh lines around blurry eyes. Sometimes I laughed so hard I feared my heart would attack me and I wouldn’t live to see the end. And some tears.

Maybe because of the marathon, my attention was snagged by a viral video of a commencement speech given by the governor of Illinois, JB Pritzker, to the Northwestern University Class of 2023 using the wisdom of The Office as its foundation.

He said one of the “secrets” of being successful was developing a hardy idiot-o-meter. Every Office has one, right? Even, as Pritzker pointed out, the Office of the Presidency. He quoted Dwight Shrute’s line: “Whenever I’m about to do something, I think ‘Would an idiot do that?’ and if they would, I do not do that thing.”

His top idiot red alert is cruelty, those in whom the primal animal-core of the brain has not evolved far enough to encompass empathy and kindness. He said it was a universal truth that the kindest person in the room was often the smartest because they had learnt to look beyond the “other”. Cruel idiots latch on to that “other”, such as race, gender, colour, “tribe”, who someone loves, and cannot make the human connection needed to “not do that thing”.

I would never cast aspersions on any of the idiots who run our lives in various forms, but Saffers really need to up their idiot-spotting capabilities.

And be kind.

• Lindsay Slogrove is the news editor

The Independent on Saturday