Bored / Boring


I had the strangest, most vivid dream recently.  I was sitting in an audience somewhere, looking up with pride as my son gave a speech.  I don't know if it was graduation or his inaugural address.  It was just a speech and he was brilliant.

He started out telling the listeners that some of them were bored.  Some of them persisted in being bored and some of them thought it was just cool to appear to be bored.  Then, he said that if they insisted on being, or appearing, bored they were doomed to a life of boredom;  that those people are, themselves, boring.

It was a good, dream speech.  And, like all good speeches, it made me think.

Is it true that if you refuse to be interested in anything, you will cease to be interesting?

I googled this concept, of course.  I found mostly "boredom busters".  Pages and pages of stuff you can look at and click on that will supposedly keep you and / or your children from being bored.  I completely disagree with the premise that if you're bored you should surf the internet.  I know that's our society's answer to everything, but really, if you just surf the internet, isn't that inherently boring?  Doesn't that behavior lead to a virtual life instead of a REAL one lived with REAL people and REAL things?

The most interesting article I read was on New Republic by Amanda Ripley.  In her article, she talks about boredom in school and the mischief that comes along with it.  I think this is a real problem.  Bright kids, forced to sit through  hour after hour of twaddle and dumbed down classes will undoubtedly let their thoughts wander and potentially wander onto topics that aren't good for them.  Kids should be kept interested in the subject at hand, not through busy work and endless worksheets, but through real, meaningful interaction with subjects and thinkers and stories who can challenge and uplift them to places they haven't even dreamed of.


I confess to feeling a good bit of boredom in recent weeks.  Sitting in the same place on the same couch night after night, watching people live their lives on TV while mine is swishing by too rapidly (even if it is an awesome TV show like Suits which we recently discovered on Amazon Prime).  It's just unsatisfying.

I'm embarrassed to admit that last week I asked my family to go to a movie with me.  That's not the embarrassing part.  My husband agreed, then backed out when tempted by comfy clothes and his spot on the couch.  Now, he works hard and I don't begrudge him his nightly Jeopardy fix.  I just felt that I NEEDED a change of scenery even though, as he was kind enough to point out, we would just be trading in our screen at home for a bigger one at the theater.  One kid wasn't interested unless he could get another family to join us.  The other kid was willing, but we didn't go, in all honesty, because it was just too much trouble and I couldn't be bothered to swim against the tide of home-bodies.

There have been some breaks in our monotony since then, and it's a good thing.  Boredom leads to mischief at home as well as at school.  Fresh air, exercise and a sense of accomplishment help.  When I feel that I've accomplished something, however insignificant, I feel happier with myself in particular and with life in general.  When I feel happier, my family seems to feel happier too.

Of course, there are proponents of "boredom" out there.  Maria Popova, who writes an amazingly interesting and thought-provoking blog called Brain Pickings, argues that there is value in boredom.  I guess the difference lies in the kind (?) of boredom.  On Brain Pickings, Popova quotes Bertrand Russell:

"Russell recognizes the vitalizing value of this greatly reviled state, outlining two distinct types of boredom:

Boredom, however, is not to be regarded as wholly evil. There are two sorts, of which one is fructifying, while the other is stultifying. The fructifying kind arises from the absence of drugs and the stultifying kind from the absence of vital activities."

I don't think boredom automatically leads to being a bore.  But, my dream, speech-making son does have a point.  We've all known those people who were too indifferent to be bothered by the effort and concentration it takes to be engaged.  Who wants to live like that?

Maybe we can't truly appreciate the times of fruitful activity until we've experienced lapses of the mundane.  I know there's a certain holiness or beauty in the routine-ness of life, but that's not what we're talking about here.  We're talking about wallowing in boredom and refusing to lift your head to see the possibilities.

So, I guess I should go out there and find something to do, some "vital activity".  Maybe I'll find I love something I didn't know I loved or that I'm good at something I didn't know I was good at.  I'll never know if I sit at home, bored.