Recently, I read someone’s opinion of society’s intolerance of boredom in this time of high-tech and overactive scheduling. Boredom’s reputation has suffered. Now it is something to be avoided. Parents fear their children will become bored. Entertainment is packed with non-stop action so that the audience will not endure a moment of boredom.
First, there are two kinds of boredom. One grows from a lack of activity or inspiration to take action. The other, from lack of interest in available (or unavoidable) activities.
It’s the first type of boredom that is worth befriending. The second, which many of us have experienced–the “I have hundreds of things I must do today and zero interest in doing any of them” (my teaching career summed up in one sentence)–is useless and destroys the human soul.
Let’s return to the “good” boredom.
Those of us who grew up before phones were filling every free moment knew the fun of having no plans, nothing to do, and in that absence of obligations and lack of easy fixes, we daydreamed. I love mindless video games, too, but no game has ever begun to compete with my daydreams and their tangents.
Boredom is where a lot of good ideas are conceived.
Maybe a certain degree of boredom is necessary for creativity and growth. As for me, I’m not going to work tomorrow and I have nothing urgent to do–I’m pretty happy about it.
