The Joy of Boredom
Don’t check that e-mail. Don’t answer that phone. Just sit there. You might be surprised by what happens.
by CAROLYN Y. JOHNSON
A DECADE AGO, those monotonous minutes were just a fact of life: time ticking away, as you gazed idly into space, stood in line, or sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
[Today,] these empty moments are being saturated with productivity, communication, and the digital distractions offered by an ever-expanding array of slick mobile devices. A few years ago, cellphone maker Motorola even began using the word “microboredom” to describe the ever-smaller slices of free time from which new mobile technology offers an escape.
But are we too busy twirling through the songs on our iPods — while checking e-mail, while changing lanes on the highway — to consider whether we are giving up a good thing? We are most human when we feel dull. Lolling around in a state of restlessness is one of life’s greatest luxuries — one not available to creatures that spend all their time pursuing mere survival.
To be bored is to stop reacting to the external world, and to explore the internal one. It is in these times of reflection that people often discover something new, whether it is an epiphany about a relationship or a new theory about the way the universe works.
Public health officials often bemoan the obesity epidemic, the unintended consequence of a modern lifestyle that allows easy access to calories. Technology seems to offer a similar proposition: a wide array of distractions that offer the boon of connection, but at a cost.
Paradoxically, as cures for boredom have proliferated, people do not seem to feel less bored; they simply flee it with more energy, flitting from one activity to the next. Ralley has noticed a kind of placid look among his students over the past few years, a “laptop culture” that he finds perplexing. They have more channels to be social; there are always things to do. And yet people seem oddly numb. They are not quite bored, but not really interested either.
I read this on TheRebelution, they wrote some posts pretty similar to this one. I linked Bored? Read this! on my reading list on the sidebar, check it out.
Anyway, just a highlight to an interesting quote in the article above that i really liked : "If you think of boredom as the prelude to creativity, and loneliness as the prelude to engagement of the imagination, then they are good things. They are doorways to something better, as opposed to something to be abhorred and eradicated immediately." ~Dr. Edward Hallowell.
I just thought this was a good article for me and you, whoever is reading. Just for example, I hear so often people [myself included] calling others up and saying, "I’m bored," and go on into hours-long mindless chatter which doesn’t really stimulate the mind or encourage thinking. It’s just temporary entertainment that vanishes once you put down the phone. A truly engaging and worthy conversation that cures boredom would be one that leaves you questioning, pondering, satisfied, curious even!
Boredom is just your mind telling you it’s hungry, so let us not feed it worthless crap by "stoning" or surfing mindlessly and aimlessly on the net. Activate it into productivity and creativity!
Off theRebelution blog, some questions for you and i to think about:
I think the tolerance for long periods of uncertainty and boredom come alongside with being motivated enough to think of something new themselves *grin*. Perhaps.
Posted by funkymonkey at March 23, 2008, 4:56 pmAll comments are moderated. Your comments will not appear here unless approved by the blog owner. Thank you.
A starving (okay!) not-so-starving artist, a fashion student, a crafty cat, a FunkyMonkey
I do not presume to know about a lot of things. I merely wish to promote good discussion about some topics that tickle my curiosity. I may be right or i may be wrong, but then, that's my prerogative, isn't it? *grin*
“As Ralley studied boredom, it came to make a kind of sense: If people are slogging away at an activity with little reward, they get annoyed and find themselves feeling bored. If something more engaging comes along, they move on. If nothing does, they may be motivated enough to think of something new themselves. The most creative people, he said, are known to have the greatest toleration for long periods of uncertainty and boredom.”
does that mean i am one of the MOST creative people ? hehehe. literary subjectivism ? perhaps.
Posted by Melissa Lai at March 23, 2008, 12:28 pm