Is That All There Is?
Cottonbro Studio, Boredom (Pexels)
In our production-oriented culture, doing nothing is almost not an option. Something like sitting and staring out of the window not only makes us feel guilty for not making proper use of our time but also uncomfortable and unbearably bored. But why is this so? And how did we come to prefer filling our downtime with social media rather than with ourselves and those around us?
Nataliya Vaitkevich, Burnout (Pexels)
The dictatorship of entertainment
Industrialization has accustomed us to a fast pace of production and consumption, and the advent of the internet has disrupted every key aspect of our lives, from work to relationships to leisure. Got ten minutes to wait for the bus? Once, it was a chance to daydream, make new friends, disconnect from the hustle and bustle of the outside world, and find a moment of peace. Today it means checking your phone, listening to a podcast, jumping between YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook.
When we are not in the “production mode,” we have become so used to having our attention steered by something or somebody else, we seem to have forgotten how to maneuver it ourselves. It’s no surprise when we acknowledge that there are thousands of people working hard every day on testing out the best ways to catch our attention.
How many of us regularly shorten our night’s sleep in exchange for just one more episode of that series we love, one more reel, one more song? And how many of us soothe our waits, hours of travel and queues in a content binge? These are proof that the entertainment industry knows exactly what we like and what could potentially engage us. And that its players are so powerful that they win against the eight hours we need in bed and boredom. If on the one side we all know the downsides of a bad sleep routine, on the other side we might think that getting rid of boredom is an indisputable victory. However, it turns out that it is not quite so.
The bright side of boredom
In every self-respecting story, there is a hero, an objective to pursue, a helper, and an antagonist. Looking at the plot of our lives, we are heroes looking for meaning, helped in this adventure by the entertainment industry, and often impeded by boredom. Technology has in fact accelerated the speed of the way we work, experience relationships, communicate, and… get bored. But what would happen if we turned the perspective of our stories upside down?
Mariam Antadze, Art (Pexels)
Boredom could become the signal that warns us that we are on the wrong track, that we are straying from our goals, or that we need to rest. And instead of avoiding it, we should learn to listen to it, as the characters of the 19th-century novelists did. For instance, what was Flaubert’s Madame de Bovary if not bored? She experienced profound dissatisfaction with her life, and her boredom led her to engage in romantic fantasies and seek out passionate love affairs.
We too, like Madame de Bovary, can look for the roots of our boredom and try to understand how to harvest its fruits. For example, if we are experiencing a lack of meaning in what we are doing, we might try to reframe it in order to align it again with our goals and values. On the contrary, if we are struggling to keep focused because we are dealing with a task which is too easy or too difficult for us, we could do our best to tweak the situation: either by increasing its complexity or by breaking the assignment down into smaller, more manageable pieces. And finally, if we feel bored because we are not doing anything, we should 100% avoid scrolling on our phones. This would lead us to instant gratification, but it would at the same time prevent us from doing something else that could provide us with a far deeper reward.
