I heard fourth hand with citations long forgotten that too much boredom can be dangerous, cause depression etc (and some sprawlbrained people like me are extra sensitive to that) but too little boredom is also unhealthy and is much more common.
So I’ve started practicing boredom a bit more. When I first started dumbphone I had a long-running, then–still-going meditation practice, and while at first I was listening to radio and music on the dumbphone, the headphone jack quickly broke leaving me bored when walking around which was horrible at first, then nice and I got used to walking without the headphone soma, then it led to me just walking less until I figured out how to hook up an old 2DS game console to play podcasts and gradually I got bored less often and when the contagion first hit my meditation practice also ended and then two years into that I got really sick.
And then two years after that, two years ago now, I got re-obsessed with the whole phone-hating thing, I’m hyperfixated on it, all that I eat and sleep and breathe is hatred of smartphones and of the modern web, and I am gradually getting into retro aesthetics even when it’s mostly larping and the for-show component is at least as important as the for-real part of it.
I got away from glowyglowy screens in favor of e-ink and RLCD and aural interfaces (radio and podcasts) and paper books both for writing and reading. Thinking all of that was my proverbial nicotine patch away from constant online and that actually facing the horrible silence would be the next step. And, it eventually was. It took me a while to get there but I’m dipping my toe in it now.
Not all the time and I’m not forcing my self too much. It’s more like (figuratively speaking) exercising, nudging myself a liiittle bit and then it feels nice. Maybe I’ll have headphones off on the way there and put them on on the way home or vice versa.
Being bored here in Stockholm (where I’ve lived for almost twenty years) feels like traveling. That’s a missed reference these days because these days traveling is the same as home. Your “For You”–page looks the same away as it does at home. But for me, putting away the book and headphones evoked a sense memory of travel, of more fully noticing the air, lamps, cobblestones, trees, trash fluttering in the wind, rain on the window.
Ironic given that Stockholm, specifically, I first started visiting only after I’ve gotten hooked on headphones. I’d always put on the Way Beyond Blue album on the repeat-all mode when I was here so if I want to evoke a feeling of traveling to Stockholm specifically, embracing the headphone life to the tunes of sweet Catatonia would be the ticket for that. But that’s not what I meant. Just that sitting at the deli counter with headphones off made me more aware of the world is all.
Being bored is scary, and for good reason: the brain wants to have fun, fun things makes it easier to learn and be happy and connect. But physical exercise is similarly scary-for-a-good-reason; instinctively I don’t want to give up precious, hard-won energy on unnecessary, unplayful, duty-bound movement. Conclusion: right now, as in the past few weeks, I’ve finally re-discovered the joys of boredom, along with the pains and dreads of it and how holding on through that pain is sometimes rewarded with how alive everything is and other times is just why-am-I-even-doing-this?
The existential dilemma of boredom is wasting time vs tasting time. At the end of all things, what will deserve the most regret? The mystic, the ascetic might think “Dang it! I should’ve embraced my curiosity, my desire to explore, I should’ve scrolled down for more videos, I should’ve let my brain cyber up and go discover and get recommended more and more and more stuff online.” And the screen junkie might think “Why did I waste it on this compulsion, this digital sugar, this junk, why did I never ever look up from this pervasive trash can I had my head stuck in all this time?”
Knowing whether boredom is good or bad becomes a pretty important question. I really wish I had the answer to that because that’s an angel I’m in a particularly nasty no-holds-barred cage fight with.
Until I figure out an answer for this, here’s a temporary answer, a cop-out, a Gordian solulu sidestepping that question:
Let’s say for the sake of argument that the experience-rich life is the better option over the staring-at-the-wall shikantaza yawnfest. Buddha don’t at me because that’s not where I’m gonna land, this is gonna be rhetorics, it’s the null hypo that we’re postulating and putting a pin in. Like in a sudoku, we’re just saying if this is an eight, would that cause contradictions elsewere? We’re not painting in the eight with ink just yet.
Now, the next question becomes what kind of experiences we’d want to fill that experience-rich life with. Actually doing stuff? Helping other people? Doing meaningful things? Not drowning in procrastinating and self-hatred and compulsive behavior? Okay, so step two then is thinking “we postulated how awesome and truly great the TikTok-drowned life is compared to the paint-dry life of just sitting. But it’s only the second best compared to all the stuff I wish I could be doing instead.” With me so far?
Then step there becomes: okay, okay, what if some amount of deliberate boredom is what’s gonna help you get away from that second best thing into the best thing? If the anti-boredom compulsion is what’s exacerbating procrastination and leaving us unable to get going on the things that really would matter to us, and overcoming the fear of boredom is what’s gonna unlock creativity, problem-solving, even regain a tiny bit of executive function? If that is true—and I don’t have the answer to that yet—then boredom is not wasting it. If that is true, boredom becomes win-win:
In the one branch of the dilemma where boredom is awesome and boredom means savoring life-as-it-is, here and now, boredom is already the winning ticket, and in the opposing branch of the dilemma where fun and busyness and jamjamjam is the ideal, boredom is still a stepping stone right into the best version of that richer life that helps us sift signal from noise.
Please don’t conflate that with that myth of how supposedly Warren Buffett at one point said “make a list of your 25 most important things, now circle your five most important ones. Done? Put the remaining twenty on an absolutely-do-not-do list.” That is fake, that doesn’t work, I’ve tried it, he never said that, I wouldn’t wanna emulate him anyway. Here, I’m not saying “step away from the 20 other appealing things in order to somehow magically receive focus and motivation and energy for the 5 best things”; instead, I’m saying that perhaps stepping towards some amount of boredom might give you the tools to better work with the more important things.
To what extent all this philosophy applies more to mainstream-headed folks and is a complete mismatch to sprawlbrains like us, that’s an unsolved question for me. It could be that this boring structure was made specifically for us and is vital lifeblood for us scatterheads whereas the plainjanes don’t need it as much, or it could be the other way around where I’m barking up the wrong tree altogether and I should try to find a more fun and entertaining toolbox to get through the day. I’m gonna keep exploring this path for a little while longer. It’s early days yet for me. And heaven knows I’m grasping at straws at this point. 😭