C onfessing to boredom is confessing to a character-flaw. Popular culture is littered with advice on how to shake it off: find like-minded people , take up a hobby , find a cause and work for it, take up an instrument , read a book, clean your house And certainly dont let your kids be bored : enroll them in swimming, soccer, dance, church groups anything to keep them from assuaging their boredom by gravitating toward sex and drugs. To do otherwise is to admit that were not engaging with the world around us. Or that your cellphone has died.
But boredom is not tragic. Properly understood, boredom helps us understand time, and ourselves. Unlike fun or work, boredom is not about anything; it is our encounter with pure time as form and content. With ads and screens and handheld devices ubiquitous, we dont get to have that experience that much anymore. We should teach the young people to feel comfortable with time.
I live and teach in small-town Pennsylvania, and some of my students from bigger cities tell me that they always go home on Fridays because they are bored here.
You know the best antidote to boredom, I asked them? They looked at me expectantly, smartphones dangling from their hands. Think, I told them. Thinking is the best antidote to boredom. I am not kidding, kids. Thinking is the best antidote to boredom. Tell yourself, I am bored. Think about that. Isnt that interesting? They looked at me incredulously. Thinking is not how they were brought up to handle boredom.
When youre bored, time moves slowly. The German word for boredom expresses this: langeweile, a compound made of lange, which means long, and weile meaning a while. And slow-moving time can feel torturous for people who cant feel peaceful alone with their minds. Learning to do so is why learning to be bored is so crucial. It is a great privilege if you can do this without going to the psychiatrist.
So lean in to boredom, into that intense experience of time untouched by beauty, pleasure, comfort and all other temporal salubrious sensations. Observe it, how your mind responds to boredom, what you feel and think when you get bored. This form of metathinking can help you overcome your boredom, and learn about yourself and the world in the process. If meditating on nothing is too hard at the outset, at the very least you can imitate William Wordsworth and let that host of golden daffodils flash upon your inward eye: emotions recollected in tranquility that is, reflection can fill empty hours while teaching you, slowly, how to sit and just be in the present.
Dont replace boredom with work or fun or habits. Dont pull out a screen at every idle moment. Boredom is the last privilege of a free mind. The currency with which you barter with folks who will sell you their habit, fun or work is your clear right to practice judgment, discernment and taste. In other words, always trust when boredom speaks to you. Instead of avoiding it, heed its messages, because theyll keep you true to yourself.
It might be beneficial to think through why something bores you. You will get a whole new angle on things. Hold on to your boredom; you wont notice how quickly time goes by once you start thinking about the things that bore you.
Being retired, I am sometimes bored out of my mind. However there are also times when I really enjoy the feeling of being able to just sit back in my home office chair or on the couch and just think. Think of nothing in particular or roll over in my mind something I need to do or that's bothering me. Sometimes thinking of nothing at all. I think far too many people are far too busy. The devices that were created to supposedly help us with getting through the day (computers, phones that are computers, watches that are computers, laptops, tablets, etc.) have just turned many people into slaves to their many devices. I have actually seen a young couple sitting across the table from each other in a restaurant, texting to each other, while texting to other people too. They looked at the waitress who wanted to take their order in a bad way, as someone distracting them from what they really wanted to be doing. Then they took pictures of their food when it arrived and, I assume, sent them out too. Turn them off and enjoy your meal and actually talk to each other!
No matter what, find some time to be bored. To just sit back and do nothing. Even if you have a full time job and family, there is always the bathtub full of suds.
Right on. Our viewpoint is skewed as we have become more and more entranced with instant gratification and higher, more extreme doses of stimulation. Did you know that many older languages didn't even have a word for boredom? The idea is a modern conscript, born from our ever increasing disconnect from the planet, and thus reality.
There are few things as edifying as listening to the wind, seeing flowers bloom, or smelling a puppies kisses. Those are things that many in the modern day would label as boring.
It took me about three years to be comfortable doing nothing. I associated idleness with laziness. If I wasn't working, I wasn't earning. Intellectually, I knew that I no longer needed to work/earn... that that part of my life was over... but forty-odd years of habit doesn't break instantly.
I heard that! Not having a job to go to meant I didn't have anything to build my life around. People live their life around their work. "I have to be to work at 7am and will be home by 4pm, 5 days a week." and then everything else, doctor appointments, family, recreation, going out to dinner, shopping, etc., was all built up around that schedule. When that schedule is gone you're left wondering what to do now?
Still, I am getting used to some of the boring times (after 5 years) and they don't make me think I'm lazy anymore. Besides, in the winter here (our summer season in the desert) when the temperatures are cooler I putter around the yard doing some things to keep busy. During the summer when it's 117 outside you tend to hibernate.
Having one of my Shih-Tzus curl up and fall asleep in my lap when I'm watching TV and listening to their soft, half-snore as they sleep. It feels so good because at that point they are so trusting. They feel so safe with their "Daddy". They know I would never do anything to hurt them and would protect them with all I have, so they feel sooooo comfortable.
I have actually seen a young couple sitting across the table from each other in a restaurant, texting to each other,
About a decade ago, in a Chinese Restaurant in Toronto where about 12 people were sitting around a round banquet table near my table, I saw two young people opposite each other speaking on their cell phones. It was not long before I realized they were speaking to each other. I believe that it's possible that in a few hundred years people will have chips inserted in their ears, eyelids and teeth, enabling them to communicate and visualize without hand-held devices. It seems to be the direction in which we are heading.
Please stick to your promise and don't reply to my comment, Randy, or I might have to bring up the Israeli government and Netanyahu.