I haven’t been bored in more than a decade and I think that’s a real shame.
Have you?
Good, old-fashioned, listening-to-the-clock-tic-toc-and-wondering-if-the-hands-are-moving-at-all boredom leads to all kinds of wonderful things like innovation, introspection, art, music, poetry and, occasionally, a ridiculously clean and well-organized bedroom.
I’d like to be so bored one day that I pull out all of my old pictures and cross-categorize them by date and subject. Even that goal, though, is a perfect example of how rusty my boredom skills have become.
The first goal of boredom should be no goal at all — a listless kind of fight club in which all-out lethargy is the prevailing state.
Sheer boredom draws the eyeballs skyward and think what glory waits patiently there — cloud dancers, shadow dwellers, shooting stars, spiritual guidance and Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.
I once witnessed a force field of boredom so strong it convinced two previously bickering and entirely untrained siblings to perform a lovely water ballet as the sun set on a Florida swimming pool. That, my friends, is the magic of boredom.
Boredom and a latent sweet tooth led magnetron engineer Percy Spencer to notice that a candy bar he’d stuck in his pocket melted as he fiddled with the settings in front of him and voila! the microwave oven was born.
I don’t know if Steve Jobs was ever bored, but I blame him and his like for the boredom banishment affecting all of our lives today. At the risk of sounding curmudgeonly, iBlame smartphones and I’m the worst.
I am a Googling, scrolling, texting, calendar-checking, Mapquest-accessing, email-responding nut job.
So, I have a new goal.
This week, I hope to be bored.
Fingers crossed.
Is that your dog??