‘What time are morning prayers tomorrow?’ I asked the monk who, after meeting me at the monastery entrance, was taking me to my room. He checked a noticeboard listing the various Offices of the Day, the routine of prayers monks carry out each day of their lives.

I followed his finger along the listings. Oh bloody hell, I thought. Lauds on Friday morning was at 5.30 a.m., and I had arrived at the Abbey of St Matthias late Thursday afternoon. Winter darkness was descending on the German city of Trier and I had trudged nearly 40km of the Jakobsweg, Germany’s Camino.

Fortunately, the monk – like the rest of his Benedictine order – was a practical man and could see my bedraggled state. He shook his head: ‘That’s far too early, don’t worry – you need to rest.’ He was right. I did need rest.

Yet we live in a culture that is obsessed with activity. In his book The Burnout Society, the Berlin philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that we are rushing so much that we often miss out on real life. Instead, our lives........

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