On Boredom

"I like boring things." --Andy Warhol

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage

"Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?" --Nietzsche

I'm not a huge fan of the reno/home decor shows which are sprouting all over the tube the last few years. As educational as these shows are supposed to be, they just make me feel stupid. And even the shows which purport to be easy on your wallet...use some definition of "easy" that's not in my dictionary. "And we've successfully made this room over, only spending $1926.43 in the process." Well, bully for you.
Debbie Travis, the guru of design, had an interview with Linda Frum in this week's issue of Macleans. I found her take on twentysomething society quite illuminating.
I'll shy away from discussing her views on childrearing, much as I'd like to. Because we do not and will never have kids, my own views on the subject are probably suspect. Besides, nobody wants to know.
But Travis did say something that has been itching away at my brain for a couple of days now.

And you know, in my generation, people understood that life is boring. There are times in your first job, your second job, your third job, when it is bone-chillingly dull. And you know what? You have to get through that.

I'm not sure why this should be, but I often feel as if I'm considerably older than my birth certificate says I am. Whenever the elderly get to talking about the way it was in their day, I feel a stab of recognition and nostalgia for a time I never saw.
I'm not naive enough to think that everything was perfect twenty or fifty years ago. For every social condition that has deteriorated over time, something else has improved. I wonder, though, how much better our society could be if we maintained at least a few antiquated values.
Notice I don't say "morals". If there's anything I hate more than people disparaging the morality of my generation, it's people trying to tell me their idea of morality is so much better. I'll hold the prevailing morals of my day high against the widespread hatred and bigotry that so characterized times past.
But oh, the things we've lost.
Our freedom, for one.
We've become slaves to many masters. We're slaves to Fashion, to Industry, to Money, to Status. Most of all, we are slaves to Time. We drink cup after cup of coffee just to wring a few extra minutes out of our day. The need for sleep is a weakness to be expunged. Waiting more than ten seconds for anything brings boredom--which is unconscionable.
Boredom is the Great Sin of our age. To inflict boredom is to level an insult of the gravest kind. The experience of boredom, nowadays, is an almost certain harbinger of approaching fear: I'm doing nothing. I should be doing something. I'm losing time. Hell, I'm losing life.

I won't say I never feel bored--I'm human--but whenever I do, I try to remember why I'm here. I happen to believe that the saying "Life is what you make it" expresses a literal truth: that we are all creating our futures, individual and collective, every day. Sometimes I need to meditate a spell to determine just what I'm going to create next, is all.

There's nothing wrong with feeling bored. In fact, boredom is a gift: it forces you to slow down and look at life from different angles. It's amazing the interesting stuff you'll discover, if only you allow yourself to feel bored every now and again.