The Gift of Boredom

We live in an overstimulated age. Many people have written about the dangers and negative repercussions of this reality: the anxiety it causes, the loss of authentic human interaction, the need for there to always be an exciting new thing while simultaneously there is nothing new under the sun. One of the things we’ve lost in this age of never-ending noise and alluring glowing devices is an appreciation of silence and the gift of boredom that comes with it.

Most of the people who grew up like I did, a kid in the 1980’s and 90’s or earlier, remember being bored at some point and bringing that complaint to our parents. “Mom, I’m bored,” was met with the response of “well, go find something to do,” “go read a book,” or most ominously, “I can give you some chores to do if you are really bored.” Go find something to do was really the best possible response. Stop whining and figure it out, find some friends and go make up a game, get out a notebook and write a story or paint a picture. My friends and I tried to invent new perfumes by collecting flowers picked from all over the neighborhood and soaking them in water. It never amounted to anything, but we had fun doing it.

Boredom is a gift. It gives us space to think, to be creative. We spend so much time receiving information, being entertained that we don’t have time (or don’t think we have time) to produce anything, even something as basic as a thought of our own. This lack of thought, of creativity, diminishes our humanity. It is contrary to our nature.

We were made, created, in the image and likeness of God, and God is creative. He has given us the gift of an intellect and an innate appreciation for beauty that is meant to compel us to ennoble the world around us; we are meant to manifest God by bringing forth things that are good, true, and beautiful.

God is also, by His very nature, relational. Boredom also helps us to see our need for others. If I am not staring at a screen, I have space to recognize that I’m lonely and if I’m bored enough, I might just be motivated to do something super scary like actually call a friend and make plans to get together in person. Wild. It is easy in our current culture to be comfortably isolated.  All of our basic, material needs can be met without human interaction and our even more basic needs, those for connection, relationship, being known by the other, can be masked and (at least temporarily) alleviated by scrolling online. But if we put down our phones and allow ourselves to feel our aloneness our need for others becomes apparent, palpable. This need is a good thing, we were made for relationships.

We cannot help that we were born into such a time as this and we cannot solve the problem of overstimulation that surrounds us, but we can make choices that keep us from being enslaved to it.

Take a media fast. Commit to one day of not going online, try for a week and see what happens. Use that time to catch up with family and friends. You don’t have to make extravagant plans, have some friends over to play cards or just hangout around a bonfire and talk. Do something creative, write a poem- it doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t have to be in support of some cause or agenda, do it just because it is fun to play with words and doing so stretches our brain. Spend some time in nature and soak up the beauty around you and then maybe paint a picture, again it doesn’t have to be good. One of my favorite lines from Chesterton, who has a lot of great lines, is “Anything worth doing is worth doing badly.” You don’t have to be an expert at something to enjoy doing it and not everything we do needs to serve some utilitarian end.

Most people these days feel like they never have enough time, but I think spending even a few hours offline would open up worlds of opportunities to engage in activities they’ve been saying no to for years. And, if after being offline for awhile you find that you really are just bored, you can always go clean your room.