Getting to know the world through boredom
Weaponizing boredom and exploring the world beyond gizmos.
It’s 5:56 on a rainy Thursday afternoon; I’m on the third car of the metro rail transit, with all seats occupied and walkways also packed with people probably going home from yet another long day at work.
I look around and I see heads bowed down, bright shades of light glowing on mysterious faces. With the exception of 3 people behind me talking (in a slightly raised voice) about their time working in that tall, black, and curvy tower we just passed by along Ortigas Avenue, everyone was loudly quiet and minding their own business.
Look everywhere
On my left is a young male employee from Proctor and Gamble (as given off by his ID lanyard) staring down at his phone watching a Japan travel vlog on YouTube. On my right is another man probably in his mid-30s napping peacefully. So is the old woman next to him.
I, too, am fiddling with my phone at the moment while trying to hide its screen with my Harry Potter tote bag suspended on my right shoulder. What else have I got to do? I’m bored. It would be awkward to stare at people. I’d watch this travel vlog with the man next to me on his phone, but that would also be awkward.
In a train car packed with people with butt cheeks almost caressing each other, we have no choice but to look down and avoid catching eyes.
Stories in people’s faces
I don’t drive. I’ve been told a lot to learn but I just didn’t have the chance. So, I commute a lot. In my everyday commute, I see different people. I don’t interact with them, but in the very brief time I’m in the same place as them, I feel like I know a little of them.
I was at a coffee shop the other day, trying to celebrate my day doing nothing. While sitting alone on a table for two, I have been discreetly looking at people. I turn from table to table as I take a sip and their faces tell me different stories — some of joy and sadness, and some I can’t even read, a story I’ll never get to know.
When I look at a person’s face, I picture an emotion they portray, then immediately withdraw my eyes. I’d stare down my coffee for the next couple of minutes with thoughts in my mind.
“This girl is so annoyingly loud. I wonder what her friends think of her.”
“He probably had a bad day at work, he looks so defeated.”
“I wonder what dinner at home looks like with this family. They seem so tied up with their gadgets.”
These stories give me things to reflect upon. The sadness I see in that man’s eyes tells me that others have it difficult in life. When I saw a genuine smile painted on that woman’s face, I was reminded that there are perpetual affairs to celebrate in life. It humbles me to know the merits of one’s feelings when they get annoyed by me for whatever reason because I have endured the same.
I fancy stories that speak to my core and provoke my imaginative faculty.
Don’t smartphone your boredom away
Sometimes, when I am the only one in the room whose attention is not demanded by my mobile device, I feel isolated. I get bored and immediately feel the need to use my phone. My constant stimulation with it gives me a neurochemical high which I admit, is a far better feeling than staring into nothingness while allowing my brain to replenish at boring times. But I don’t want to be vulnerable to its allure. It’s rather bleak.
I may sound like an intruder to one’s personal hell, but when I’m bored, I let my eyes telegraph cues into one’s disposition, emotions, and behavioral intentions — an unspoken language that transcends temporal borders.
I am introduced to variants of stories, stories that allow me to get in touch with things in the real world. Messages come across. Some tell me to look away, others ask me to look deeper. Some have seen heaven without dying and some have gone through hell. One is drowning in his misery and the other is asking for help. I see a sad generation of humans struggling to survive through smiling faces and forced laughter.
But there are some I can’t uncover.
Could they be planning something sinister? Maybe they’re dead inside and just getting by. Or could it be apathy they’re feeling? A terrible numbness. Harmless. Lethal. Or maybe even a mixture of both.
And you, I wonder what stories your eyes will tell when I look at them.
Get familiar with unfamiliar surroundings
As you go home from work or dine with friends outside, there will be a point where you feel bored while waiting to get to your destination or for your food to be delivered to your table because you ran out of topics to gossip about. Immediately, you reach for your phone in your pocket and start scrolling through your feed to kill time. But instead of committing that blunder during what’s supposed to be your sacred space with yourself, you are hereby challenged to resist the urge and instead look around. Even just for a while.
Observe.
See what speaks to you.
See what doesn’t.
Be curious.
Get deeper.
Learn and unlearn.
Acknowledge where peoples’ priorities lie.
Understand why that is.
Make the world your steady “timeline.”
You won’t really get to know the world when your only source of knowledge is what social media tells you. This is because most of the time, you only see what you’re meant to know. And what you see are controlled narratives — selections made by algorithm on your behalf.
Sure, social media is, without question, a framework for knowing, but it only allows you to know one thing at this very second and forget it the next. Today, you see an act of charity on your TikTok feed where an influencer randomly gives out $100 to a homeless person just because. In a short while, you’ll have consumed an influx of content leaving you untethered to that recent memory.
This means that what you know about the good deeds in the world can only last that short. So if you think you know the world because of what you’re told by your narrow circle of friends and families on social media, you don’t really know the world.
What’s probably the most genuine frame is seeing. Because as you see, you immediately start imagining. You develop a deeper curiosity about the marginal community. You get immersed in the principal concepts of truth, belief, and justification, allowing your mind to deliberate issues — the social, physical, and spiritual.
Deeper knowledge allows you to be more tolerant of others. The emotional high you feel when witnessing an event firsthand allows it to be embossed into your memory bank for a longer period of time.
Look for adventures in life and prepare yourself for all the bad that is out there. With it, you gain a better understanding of the world beyond your echo chamber and a greater appreciation of different points of intersection of our values and culture and our way of living. The ultimate point here is that mentally and emotionally, this is how we grow.
So do it. Explore. Use the power of sight and boredom and grant yourself the privilege to directly experience the world. Because to do otherwise is to deny yourself years worth of history and knowledge.
