The Power of Boredom
Harnessing the Mundane
Even the word stresses you out. I even risk a lack of clicks on this topic because the very word triggers a response in readers that makes them want to look away and browse their phones. There’s a new video game that came out, or if you're my dad, you’ve got a project waiting for you in the workshop.
Being bored has become a way of the past that modern technology has promised to remove. Instead of pretending to be a Union Infantry Soldier taking cover with a stick they found in the woods (guilty), children are subject to major positions of disadvantage. They are pacified by what’s on an entertainment device, because boredom is the same as isolation in prison.
It’s not going to kill you.
In a study by the University of Virginia, they discovered that students would rather feel a painful shock than to go a few minutes without their phones.
Why is this?
How have we become a society so hell-bent on hiding ourselves away on a device, when there’s so much potential for the human mind? This isn’t an anti-phone blog, but rather the idea of being left alone is a fate worse than death at times.
I’m sure that’s not the majority of my audience, but the fact remains: boredom is like a great cat waiting for a mouse to poke its nose out of the hole in the wall. We must defy this cat and run out there, fists raised in rebellion. We scream at it when we emerge, come hell or cat claws. However, what we find once we emerge from our place of hiding is something we don’t expect:
The house is empty, there’s no cat, there’s no farmer, there’s no cheese. You’ve spent all this time hiding in your cozy bed of lavender lint, and dined on the scraps out of sheer safety, and once we’ve broken past that, we see that there’s nothing there that’s going to get us.
The boredom stops, and we realize that the potential was within ourselves the entire time. Once you think about it, you realize it’s been so long, you can’t even remember the cat’s name. You’ve hidden yourself away from all of this, and once you’re here, you see that there’s an adventure to be had. Where will you find food now that there is no cat? Are there other mice? Will a new farmer move in? This opens your world up, and you emerge unscathed and unhurt. A little hungry, but not hurt.
You’ve steeled yourself away from this boredom, and it’s not the enemy you think it is. It never has been. You’ve fought against it your whole life, and now that you’re here, you realize it’s an opportunity. Not a punishment.
Embrace the benign.
Every infantryman will understand between the chaos of all the ridiculous orders, and the foolish tomfoolery, there are large gaps of nothing. These are the moments typically after they’ve ordered you to get up at three to be at a specific location in your uniform, gear, and with your weapon. You arrive at the location closer to four in the morning, and then you’re dropped off with your cohorts. You all stand there, and as you are left behind, you’re told, “Just stay here until we get back.”
And then they’re gone for three more hours.
You don’t have your phone on you because it’s safely in your locker back at your unit, and as the more experienced soldiers sit on their ruck sacks and light up a cigarette, you realize there’s nothing between all the running and panicking of the day. There’s just you guys and the morning sun, which is set to come up in about two hours.
As you sit there, there are some of you who take the opportunity to power-nap while the rest of you speak quietly about random subjects. Usually, they’re inappropriate, but that’s to be expected. Think of the infantry as another few years of high school, and you’ve got the conversations figured out.
At that point in time, I hadn’t made any close friends yet, and I caught myself just sitting on my rucksack, watching the waves of brown grass waft in the pink morning. The smell of cigarette smoke fills my nose as my tired mind wonders when my little dumplings at home will wake up asking for me.
It was in these often-found moments that I discovered something I’d been running from when I was back in society; I remembered that I have a keen sense for my surroundings, and an awareness of moments like these. What the other guys saw as a stupidly planned morning where simple. We were left to our devices and stared at each other while shuffling our heels in the red Colorado dirt.
What I saw in those moments was a feast for the mind. Of course, I was too tired to truly portray the poeticized moments of my views, but the way the Rocky Mountains trailled off to the west of us cut into the sky like great sleeping beasts, and the desert to the south of us reached out into the horizon, promising a hot day after a frigid morning surrounded by cacti.
It was in these moments that I learned to embrace the boredom, and I personally feel the reason a lot of veterans are both extremely impatient and impatient is because these moments taught us to just “deal with” the boredom. It was a moment to take a break, and we eventually looked forward to these times. It was meditative, and even in hindsight, I miss these mornings.
You’ll never be bored again.
When I was eleven, it was a warm summer day, and I’d just finished a book that took me a week to read through. I put it down next to me and looked over at my dad, who was going through a mail-order catalog, Cheaper Than Dirt! Magazine. I turned to my father and told him two words that I’ve never uttered aloud since then. Perhaps even preparing me for my eventual time in the military.
“I’m bored.”
“You’re bored, huh?” was his reply, and it was then, I knew I had messed up.
That afternoon, I mowed our lawn, the neighbor’s lawn, and the library’s lawn across the street from my house. The following day, I hand-raked these lawns and returned home a much less bored child.
Now, this story might seem condescending to my father, who is a good man. However you see this incident, my dad taught me something no boss, supervisor, or sergeant ever wants to hear. It also taught me something very important: I learned how to be “un-bored”. Whenever I felt myself finding the urge to cry out the infamous two words, I’d think critically to myself: “Am I really bored?”, and then I’d do something.
I could argue this had a part in my hunger to write, and I was thrust into a world of production. If the urge of boredom came up, I’d read a book, walk through the woods, pretend I was fighting for the Union with a stick I found, or take a bike ride to the local beach just to watch the waves. Before I knew it, the boredom had resolved itself, and I no longer felt the urge to complain. Each time I was bored, I would shout it down by doing things.
Since this practice has been a strong part of my life, it sounds like I’m making it up when I say, “I’m never bored.”
I’m truly not. Each time the urge comes back, I instinctively find something productive to do. I don’t just play a video game. Boredom is my friend, and I’m here for it when it needs me.
Your turn.
For the love of God, do something away from your phone this week.
I know it’s tempting to reach for the device that has been programmed to keep you attached at the hip of it, but trust me on this one.
Go for a walk. Read a book. Clean the house. Play with your dog.
Do something that doesn’t involve your connection to the outside world. If you go for walks, inspiration about the trees or nature, or the like, will come to you. Get your imagination going, and do something else besides sitting there feeling sorry for yourself. I’m often wrought with things that could keep me occupied, but I’ve made a practice out of working at my computer. When I’m done with class, I think, “now what?”, to which I look up to see my computer.
With my computer, I open a writing program and type something like this out. Sometimes I’ll work on a novel I’ve been keeping hidden from my followers (wink), or maybe I’ll research a subject that’s fascinating to me. Lately, I’ve been teaching myself about coal miners and the lives they live. This kind of research for fun is how I ended up writing Mississippi on Ice.
If you’re smart, being bored will be the greatest gift to your productivity.
-Joe