I do all I can to avoid boredom. I fill my time with actions
and/or distractions. My job is constantly busy and full of tasks; I
devour social media, read continuously, play games and blog. It is all very
interesting and I learn a lot from others but I think I am less
creative as a result. My mind
seems to abhor a vacuum and rather than fill it with musings and creative
theory I tend to distract it with toys, gizmos, articles and
arguments with crazies on the internet.
I have two young kids and their minds
dislike boredom too, but with less entertainment or distraction at hand they
are much better than I at creativity. They turn a cardboard box in to a house,
race about, sing just for the hell of it and find some inventive way to
irritate each other. Whatever they are doing, and whether they are well behaved
or not they are relying upon themselves for their own solutions and putting
their mind to solving their need without turning to the "junk food"
quick fix.
The issue of boredom has been around forever and we are taught
that it is bad, idle hands are tools for the
devil after all and anyone who is a man (or heaven forbid a lady) of
leisure is frowned upon. In the middle ages it was described as "acedia" a
very serious affliction that was defined by "a state of restlessness
and inability either to work or to pray", even as the precursor
to sloth - one of the seven deadly sins and an evil
affliction to be avoided at all costs. But I find that some of my best
ideas have come from boredom. Moments of hanging around or just stopped and
waiting.
So all this got me thinking do I need to repossess boredom? If I
was frustrated more often, with nothing to do could I improve my creativity?
But perhaps I was confusing boredom with thinking? And while I think that
learning constructive ways to think such as a process of reflection, structured
thinking and even meditation would be valuable, I maintain boredom is useful.
Structured thinking requires planning. You need to set aside time to do it,
prepare a quite place and decide a method and so forth. But boredom is
unstructured. It happens to you in random and unplanned ways. In my case this
tends to be mostly down to my daughters unwillingness to sleep or Southern
trains working to the time table of “Middle Earth”. What I think boredom
requires is simply for us to be slowed. It needs to creep up on us and display
its self it then it requires us to sit with it awhile - not to pick up our
Smartphone, grab the mouse or stuff in our headphones but rather to just sit
and dwell a while. I am going to try this out. I think it is going to
be excruciating at first but I think I will benefit by trying. If it
all gets too much I can always fill the void by blogging about it.
