It’s a feeling we try pretty hard to not have. It’s a feeling we’d rather avoid. I think that’s probably been true for all time but it’s especially true in our fast paced, anything at the reach of a button, 21st century world.
It’s a feeling you used to know as a kid if you were lucky enough to be born in the 50s, 60s or before.
There weren’t any cell phones. There wasn’t any Wi-Fi. There were no computers, at least not the kind you could have at home. There were televisions but programming was sporadic and if you were lucky there was maybe a show in the evening that you could watch once in a while but certainly not the endless hours of potential channel surfing or Netflix bingeing.
That translated into wide open blocks of time; wide open blocks of time where there was inevitably boredom. Capital letter boredom in fact. What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do?
Back in the day, we didn’t really have much choice except to move through that boredom somehow—to sit with it, bear it and somehow create something out of it. There was no quick fix. Sometimes boredom could just roll on and on.
Now, that’s not so much the option anymore and in fact, on the surface of it, that seems like a great thing. At the push of a button we can hear a song. At the flip of a switch we can have a flatscreen TV. The day’s news—dished out in whatever format we’d like. We can read it on our cell phones, we can watch it on our television screens, 24 hours a day. We can tap into it through Twitter.
And all of that is nice. All of that is really nice on some level. But it comes at a price and it might be a price that’s higher than you’re willing to pay.
We lose something when we lose boredom. When we avoid boredom we stifle a part of ourselves; we stunt a creative part of ourselves that wants to grow and evolve. A part of ourselves actually requires boredom to sprout and thrive. It’s in the land of boredom that we dream up all kinds of ideas.
As we strain to entertain ourselves in the middle of boredom, our creativity blossoms. It’s like putting together a really nice juicy pile of compost and folding it into the soil. Tending that plot of land. Making space. Rich, fertile soil. There are seeds in you and seeds in me that want to grow and boredom makes space for those seeds; boredom creates compost filled, lush, nourishing soil in which they will grow and thrive.
It’s not a bad idea to intentionally cultivate some boredom in your life. You can start small with this. Set a timer for an hour to turn everything off—no cell phones, no TV, just space space and time. No distractions. And see what happens.
I’m sure there have been many things in your life that have been created in the silence and stillness of boredom. I hope you’ll join me in creating a little boredom in your life here and there. It won’t take long before that boredom starts to fill up with things and activities that probably wouldn’t have come in any other way except through boredom and those activities are treasures. There’s really good stuff there; the stuff that our souls are calling for us to be doing and that’s a pretty cool thing.
I’d love to hear what you’re up to in the brackets of boredom in your life. Leave me a comment and let me know.
