Alone You Are Too Close To a Rascal. How To Handle The Burden Of Boredom?
Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher. He made a significant contribution to Stoicism. The Letters to Lucilius is Seneca’s most widely read and influential work. In a collection of 124 letters that Seneca wrote at the end of his life, during his retirement, he stated:-
You ought to make yourself of a different stamp from the multitude. Therefore, while it is not yet safe to withdraw into solitude, seek out certain individuals; for everyone is better off in the company of somebody or other, — no matter who, — than in his own company alone. “The time when you should most of all withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.” Yes, provided that you are a good, tranquil, and self-restrained man; otherwise, you had better withdraw into a crowd in order to get away from your self.
Alone, you are too close to a rascal
How To Kill Modern Boredom With Creativity?
Modern man fears boredom. He likes having free time but he panics when faced with free time. He feels guilty. Possibility of getting bored worries him. This is a story of an average man. But for a creative person boredom is an opportunity, it is a human condition that you need to face and not escape.
Albert Camus has said
Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre
Deliberate boredom avoids modern world distractions and makes you creative.
Origin of Boredom ➡ Boredom is rooted deeper in the core of human existence. In the ancient time life was monotonous and the pace of life was slow. But creative people used it and created great works.
But today’s modern man is actively seeking out ways to minimizing the feelings of boredom. Boredom averting technology takes us away from boredom but only to make us slave of it.
Today, Someone can argue boredom is just a poor management of time; they will tell you to find something fun to do if not productive.
Using Boredom ➡ Purposefully induced boredom can take you into a heightened and choice-less awareness world where you don’t feel like giving any context to your thoughts, and you witness the present moment without any bias and efforts. If you stay there for a while any bias or opinion can be checked; and you have an opportunity to correct your thoughts and biases there only.
Ordinary felt boredom is useless — simply bad, but induced boredom is “fruitful monotony”, Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell called it so.
We don’t really hate boredom, but rather, we’re addicted to distraction
Average modern man, while sensing a little freedom coming his way, fears boredom; and feels that something terrible is going to happen and falls for any smallest distraction. You need to create more and consume less because you have been constantly pulled away from paying attention to the beautiful things that enrich your lives to something totally insignificant like notification sound on your mobile
Learning how to use idleness could open doors for unlimited opportunities. Take a stock of your creative passionate skills and transform those into something useful. Unshackle your creative power and create something on your own. Modern man likes his daily hustles so much that he wastes himself to it, he has stopped pondering on the meaning of life.
Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon — Susan Ertz
