Boredom & Us
Our world is increasingly complex. Centuries of necessary advancements and rapid production has manufactured a society of wonder, opportunity, and constant amusement. And don’t get me started on free will. Literally, I was out with a friend yesterday and saw a man wearing a banana costume riding a unicycle. For his own shits and giggles. Entertainment is everywhere, and like banana-unicycle man, if not, we can create it ourselves! And of course, if that does not work, we can tap and scroll for as long as we please. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, you name it, viral videos and DIYs are just seconds away. Growing up in this materially prosperous day and age has been amazing, do not get me wrong. But this consistent and ongoing stimulation can be overwhelming. Yet, we seldom leave an activity or piece of media to go do nothing, and instead, move on to the next and most newly interesting venture. Even our current cultural definitions of ‘taking a break’ includes the use of some form of entertainment: the newest movies, posts, and apps. In a large regard, it is hard to blame us! These gadgets, smartphones, and media networks are built off of short-term dopamine-drive feedback loops that assist in addicting us to these modes of pleasure. In this time of persistent engrossment, we rarely appease our own psychological and imaginative needs. We always have a million things to think about or explore, but to what extent do we slow down to enjoy it all? Despite so many new concepts, hobbies, research, or entertainment outlets at our fingertips, how often do we let our brains imagine like they once did? There is so much intrinsic and extrinsic value in allowing ourselves to be bored, undistracted, and full of individual creativity. Although our current society instills the value of production and external fulfillment into our everyday practices, allowing our minds to wander is almost solely the largest contributor to self, social, artistic, and professional success.
Are you actually interested or just bored?
Fact: we are busy people with responsibilities. I don’t have time to be bored, I got things to do! The word ‘bored’ posits that one must stare into a blank white wall and feel absolutely nothing to be in a state of disinterest. However, we are often unamused way more than we like to admit. A research study published in 2019 found that the average American is bored about 131 days a year. Now, I don’t know about you, but I do not have 4 months of paid leave for me to go do and accomplish absolutely nothing. This is because many of the activities we engage in every day do not actually fulfill a desired level of satisfaction, though the alternative seems even more uninviting. We go about our jobs and social events content with the day but are still eager to explore elsewhere. This is where our lack of workplace productivity and social media addictions come into play. Although the number of hours American employees work has increased, our actual productivity levels thereof have simultaneously declined. Our workload, text messages, office chatter, or side projects keep us distracted from our daily tasks. Especially when we are not impassioned by the work we do, a search for pleasure elsewhere overcomes us. These ideas are only exacerbated by our access to social media platforms and other people’s lives. Don’t know what to do? Let’s see what everyone else is up to. This is demonstrated in the unfortunate and still growing rise in phone usage behind the wheel, in which being required to focus on a single task for an extended period of time warrants a distraction or simply, a search for something more interesting. We so often want to be somewhere other than the place we are in, because that place has plagued our network intake as more shiny, more fun, and more enjoyable.
"Inability to tolerate empty space limits the amount of space available," as the British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion once put it.
Until we stop seeing the world we live in as mundane and easily replaceable or animated, our desire to search for stimulation elsewhere will remain an epidemic.
Largely, when we begin to feel the symptoms of boredom kicking in - we begin to partake in adventures we would not maybe normally go out of our way in finding interest in. This can be an awesome thing, as it mobilizes us to expand our interests and try new things. For example, I recently picked up painting because one day I had nothing to do and this activity was something I always wanted to try. If I had nothing else to distract me in that instance, I may very well have never driven to Micheals and set myself up! But searching for new tasks can be destructive when it comes at the cost of leaving projects half-done, feeling unfulfilled with every errand, and finding little joy in a quantity of endeavors as opposed to being patient enough to build quality. Take, for instance, getting antsy for something new after two weeks into a work project, which results in your leaving a series of half-assed and attempted ideas because of an inability to stay satisfied and entertained. This can also lead to building friendships out of material interest or engaging in a romantic relationship to feel something different or mess around - which can ruin people and potentially authentic connections. Are our endeavors out of personal desire? Or are we trying to avoid the restless and monotonous activity of boredom?
Why do we fear boredom?
We do not actively tell ourselves that we are approaching a mental state of disinterest and stagnation in order to motivate us to search elsewhere, but we have developed a psychological defense mechanism for when extrinsic pleasure is no longer a source of fulfillment. On to the next! We think. We feel entrapped in our own mind and it horrors us to come face-to-face with the self. We have been down spirals of overthinking, longing, guilt, and shame before, we partake in countless activities in attempt to avoid similar mental processes that occur in the absence of stimuli. In fact, The University of Virginia and Harvard even reported that individuals would rather hurt themselves by administering a masochistic electric shock than sit alone with their thoughts, bored, for fifteen minutes. Why do we refuse to face what is inside our own head? One of the largest reasons for our boredophobia (that is not a word but it totally should be) is the negative world our mind wanders to when we approach stillness. Our insecurities, fears, lack of confidence, unhealed trauma, and unhealthy attachments begin to surface. We remind ourselves of the hurt we have yet to process in the midst of all of life’s responsibilities and fun-filled adventures. We suppress and we move forward despite adequate processing or self-made closure.
Responding to a State of Boredom
But the only way out is through! Enduring the discomfort of a mind plagued by past hardships, childhood events, or violent thoughts, is where meaningful change begins. It is not so much that we run away from boredom - disinterest always lingers - but it is the way we react to it. We begin approaching a state of contentment, as opposed to an overflowing positive or negative emotion, so we search elsewhere. I had a conversation with a close friend a few weeks ago about the harms of the “I’ll be happy when…” mindset. We had both recently fallen victim to it, as we had just endured two weeks of some crazy exams, and we held the perspective of life being easier and more enjoyable when exam season concluded. While to an extent a weight was lifted from our shoulders, it seemed there was still something to be overwhelmed with. We no longer spent day and night cramped up in our bedrooms attempting to embody every calculus and historical concept ever published, but in the absence of such stress, it was almost as if we created our own. We were so used to having something to do - theories to memorize, applications to practice - that without an required overflowing agenda our minds began to create irrelevant problems to cope with the normativity of life activities. And neither of us knew we were actually doing this until we had talked about it! We no longer felt an intense emotion - stress, fear, anxiety - that when we felt nothing we reverted to familiar emotional intensities. I subconsciously responded to boredom with distractors that added absolutely nothing positive to my life or future. This conversation challenged me to sit with my thoughts and find the joy in just being content. Nothing extraordinary needs to happen to me today. I do not have to search for a tragic romance or endure a painful defeat. I can just be. And that is interesting as fuck!
Allowing our Minds to Wander
I challenge you to stop constantly doing. I had the chance to meet with the Minneapolis Commissioner of Human Rights, and I walked away from that interaction with a whole new outlook on life.
1) Find your core value. I will probably get into this some other time because WOAH.
But anyways, 2) You are a human being not a human doer.
Do nothing to do nothing. Not for a purpose of future creation and forced bored inspiration. Creativity from boredom will come, that is certified, but engage in an activity of ‘nothing’ to just be and imagine. Our brains never stop working, boredom is a beautiful break. A place of stillness stimulates task engagement, work productivity, artistic output, and even interpersonal skills. Neuroscientist Alicia Walf, a researcher in the Department of Cognitive Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, says it is critical for brain health to let yourself be bored from time to time. This same source goes on to explain how many scientists and creators have actually been able to solve a complex problem when they stop thinking about it. Face your intrinsic fears and question your insecurities. Make your mind the kindest home in your life.
Neuroscientist Alicia Walf leaves us with:
“Give boredom a try and see what your brain comes up with.”
