A woman I know tells me that she cannot sink. She dives into the lake and just pops right back up to the surface. She tries to dive down head first into the water and her feet stick out on top kicking air. She has even worn weights to help her plumb the depths. All to no avail. She just buoyantly pops up and floats on.
That’s similar to my experience with boredom. I can’t seem to get bored. I can’t sink into a quiet melancholia that comes with having nothing to do, nothing of interest or amusement. I have almost forgotten how to softly sigh in sad ennui. Oh, for some emptiness, I pine.
This is a problem. I envy those who can avail themselves of such delights. I wake up some mornings and say to myself, this is it, this morning I am going to do nothing, just get bored. Mope around the house with nothing on my mind except that there is nothing on my mind. Time to gaze at the ceiling or my navel and try not to think about it.
So, I head off to the coffee shop with my New Yorker and there’s the mistake. I’m sitting there all blank and bored and, idly leafing through the magazine, I find a piece about something I didn’t even know I was interested in. I can’t put it down until I’ve finished reading about people who spend weeks underground exploring deep caves a mile and a half below the surface of the earth. Oops, there I go again not being bored.
There’s always something to do--something I want to do--that I can’t find the time to get bored. Or should I say, I can’t find the interest in getting bored? I’ll go for a bike ride on a sunny, warm day down along the river. I’ll start a project in the yard like getting the garden ready for planting. I’ll draw diagrams of what I want to plant where. There’s always something in the house needing doing or cleaning or fixing. I have to get the guest room ready for my mother-in-law’s visit. And then there’s yoga classes, writing classes, preparing stories to tell on Mondays, and volunteer work at Project Angel Heart on Thursdays. And there are books to read, trips to plan, friends to have lunch with or coffee or dinner, plays to see, and art exhibits to stand in awe of.
When am I ever going to get around to being bored? Do I need to write it down in my day-timer? It’s set then—1 p.m., Tuesday: get bored.
It must take determination to get bored, I think, and I just don’t have it. But that seems counter to the whole idea. Isn’t boredom supposed to happen to you, like flu, not something you can plan and manipulate? Boredom is supposed to be unwanted, not sought after. Something to get over, not luxuriate in.
Maybe I’m easily distracted and easily entertained or just plain shallow and shallow people don’t get bored because we just don’t get it at all and go on being easily entertained.
Now, I’m not saying I’m always happy. That’s another issue entirely. In fact, I spent most of last year unhappy though not bored. That was the January my husband nearly died in surgery. His recovery was slow, long and difficult and for two months we didn’t know if he was going to make it. It wasn’t until one day in September that I realized that he had actually made it and recovered and therefore, so could I and a little happiness crept back into my life. I might even have gotten a bit bored then when I realized I was no longer a 24-hour, on-call nurse and had to find something else to do, like get back to my life. What did I used to do, I remember asking myself one day.
My quest to be bored doesn’t mean that I am against happiness. I don’t march around the house like Lady Macbeth saying, “Out damned spot of happiness, out!” although happy people can really get on one’s nerves. Like Starbucks caffeine jockeys who always want to know how my day is going so far. It’s none of your business and you don’t care, I want to say, and besides I’m trying not to be chipper because I’m trying to be bored and just hang and let my mind dry out in the breeze. Maybe caffeine isn’t a good idea here.
When I was a kid, I remember getting bored late in the summer when it was really hot and the thrill of summer vacation had faded like the lawn I wasn’t interested in watering. Of course, we, the kids on my block, weren’t about to admit that we were ready to go back to school where we at least had something to do, so we just hung out and did nothing until one of our parents caught on and they always had a million things to do, like water the lawn. You never complained about being bored to your parents. That was dangerous and, besides, defeated the purpose of being bored.
Boredom seems to me to be a tremendous luxury. It’s not merely a matter of quiet time—though that’s hard enough to find. It’s more like a psychological desperation, a sense of being at the end of a rope. Nothing appeals. Nothing excites. It lets you empty your mind, let it go dry.
And then when the psychic rain does fall a new seed will sprout and you’ll go, “That’s cool,” and you’re off on a starry new trail of fascination. Boredom can turn around to a path to happiness. Find a new book to read, a new project to write, a new recipe to try for dinner. Something, anything to get out of the doldrums, put wind back into my sails and get my little boat moving.
But right now I need to stop moving, let the wind die down, let the clouds gather. I’ve been retired for five years and—though nobody believes me--what I need is a day off. To get bored.
© June, 2014
About the Author
Nicholas grew up in Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks, does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.
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