For the Love of Boredom
“Lean in to boredom, not your smartphone screen. You’ll learn more about yourself and the world around you than you think.”
Hands up if you don’t know we are now more distracted than ever.
Anyone?
No?
Alright then, moving on…
You are commuting to school or work.
Mindlessly scroll through instagram.
Waiting in line at the supermarket, dentist…etc
Whip out your phone and check facebook.
On the toilet.
Read Medium articles. (guilty)
And etc. You get the idea.
We have slowly lost our ability to embrace boredom by replacing it with intellectual junk food i.e. constant social media usage, binge watching Netflix
When was the last time you truly allowed yourself to do nothing? To choose not to engage with the world around you. To live, breathe, blink and live in the moment with just your thoughts. To get stuck with your inner self?
Nowadays its o so easy to distract ourselves from the world around us, especially during our dead time. To make matters worse, I feel self-help gurus/writers are indirectly encouraging us to do this.
How you ask?
Everybody and their tv commercial wants you to believe that we now live in an age where in order to be useful, we must always be continually learning.
Though this may be true to some extent, they have taken it a step further by encouraging you to:
- Listen to audiobooks/podcasts during your commute/chores/bath-time or when doing any other task that doesn’t require focus.
- Reading a set number of books each month.
- Using an app like Blinkist so that you can “read” 4 books in a day. (I’ll express my disdain for Blinkist in another post).
- Engage in intellect porn by reading articles that will help you grow.
As a result, we are constantly bombarded with noise and distractions and thus have no way to discover the healing benefits of spending time alone. (amazing article. Highly recommend it).
Distracting myself from boredom is something am working on curbing in my life.
Boredom is a powerful state, a space for imagination and invention as well as self-reflection.
Some of the best thinking I have done was while in the shower, or taking a long walk, or stuck in traffic watching the world go by, or even during a lecture in a stuffy classroom on a slow afternoon.
It is these moments of boredom that I have had insightful ideas (including this post). As a result, I no longer feel the desire to shy away from boredom. In fact, I highly embrace it. And I encourage you to do the same; because boredom is the last privilege of a free mind.
If you got a blank space, baby… just enjoy it, rather than trying to find something (or someone) to fill it.
Originally appeared on https://theamuser.wordpress.com
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I am The_Amuser and I don’t know shit. Am just sharing musings about life through the eyes of a Kenyan college student on a tight budget :D
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