I miss boredom. Boredom is a great hack for bringing out the inventiveness in a person. But I haven’t been genuinely bored since I was a teenager.
Ever since I was a senior in high school, I’ve been piling on the responsibilities to the point that I rarely have spare time to be bored. Add to that the siren call of omnipresent electronic devices seducing my attention with promises of immediate gratification whenever I have a moment of idleness. The luxury of indulging in pure boredom without some unfinished task beckoning me or making me feel guilty doesn’t currently exist in my life.
I can, however, still remember boredom. Sometimes I long for those endless days of summer when I was a kid. Days with absolutely nothing to do, having no obligations, worries, or cares. The days before my parents figured out they could saddle me with chores. I recall going outside on a hot sunny day, and if there were no kids around to play with, and I was left to my own machinations to entertain myself, then I would wander around until something triggered my curiosity or imagination. Boredom never lasted long before I found something creative to do.
A pool of tar bubbling up out of the pavement on the road in front of my house was always a welcome sight. You can make all sorts of things with warm, soft tar. Later on, I would get yelled at by my mother for ruining my clothes with permanent black streaks and spots. She would roughly scrub the remnants of the tar from my hands with an old rag and some gasoline.
But I never learned. The next time I found some of that gooey gunk, I would try to stay clean by playing with it using sticks instead of my fingers, but inevitably, it still got all over me.
My Boredom Led Me to Both Fun and Trouble
My parents liked to use our fireplace often, but firewood was expensive; it took up a lot of room to stack, and it created a habitat for snakes. My dad grew up in a home heated with a potbelly stove, so his solution was to put a grate in our fireplace and have a truckload of coal delivered to the house. It was a huge pile beside the carport that lasted for years. I discovered my inner genius using chunks of coal as building blocks; I still got in trouble, but you don’t need gasoline to scrub off coal dust.
To keep me out of the coal and the tar, Dad built a large wooden sandbox for me to play in. He had a truckload of sand brought in; Dad was a builder, so he frequently thought in large quantities.
At first, I thought it was too boring to be bothered with, but then one day, after a good rain, I realized that wet sand is moldable. You can sculpt it just like you can at the beach. I made castles and mountains and set up battles for my toy soldiers. I built winding roads, tunnels, and raceways for my Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. And I concocted stories and narratives to go with each. Dry sand was boring compared to wet sand, but my imagination would eventually prevail. The only drawback was the occasional deposit left by a neighborhood cat.
We had a stream that wound around two sides of our house. It’s difficult to maintain boredom by a stream. They offer endless innovative entertainment from catching crawfish to building dams and creating ponds for cooling off on hot afternoons. The point is that boredom opens up possibilities with every single thing around you that would’ve gone unnoticed otherwise.
Our Electronic Gizmos Call for Our Constant Attention
Electronic communication devices dull our imagination, whether it’s a laptop computer, tablet, smartphone, handheld gaming device, or just a television or radio. When these things are always within reach, eliminating boredom is easy. And, because it is so easy, it intensifies the feelings of boredom because we never learn to get used to them. They make us lazy and cause our creativity to atrophy.
Kids growing up in the Information Age have so many wonderful learning opportunities at their fingertips, but I’m not sure it’s a good thing if they can’t step away from their gadgets long enough to get bored and discover their imagination.
I love the technology of today; I’m no Luddite. But when I see people alone by themselves, engrossed with their smartphones, I see the missed opportunity of being bored. If you are never bored, you are unlikely to try new things. When you turn off the outside stimulation, you allow your mind to wander, to daydream, to think new thoughts, and maybe generate new ideas.
In my new book, Everyday Innovation: Enjoying the Creative Lifestyle for Fun and Fortune, I provide several fun ways in which people can stimulate and exercise their imaginations, such as planning a vacation or a themed party; thinking up a new use for a common product; or visualizing the life you wish you were leading.
Boredom and Ennui Are Not the Same
After conducting a survey that showed a correlation between boredom and depression, psychologist John Eastwood, Ph.D., of York University in Toronto, speculates that boredom may be a risk factor for depression. He says, “When people are bored, they’re disengaged from satisfying activity and more likely to become internally focused in a negative, ruminative cycle.”
I disagree. It’s not boredom but ennui that can lead to depression. While they are often cited as synonyms, boredom is an uncomfortable feeling caused by a lack of stimulation that is easily remedied; ennui is a deeper feeling of apathy, weariness, and enervation that may require professional help to overcome (see my post “Help, My Motivation Dried Up”).
The next time you have nothing to do, resist the temptation to pull out your smartphone. Allow yourself to be bored and see where it takes you. Discover the power of your creative mind; you’ll be glad you did.
