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Feeling bored?

In the midst of a pandemic, boredom has naturally become a symptom of lockdown, appearing on a daily, even hourly basis.

Historically, we’re less bored than we’ve ever been, but we’re also more afraid of boredom than ever before. Our devices might be to blame; however, technology is, in its initiation, an incarnation of, and not a cause of the human compulsion for doing at the cost of being. In a culture that ranks busyness as a status symbol, we cautiously avoid boredom like a virus, as if to be caught in our own idle company amounts to a grave personal failure.

Research demonstrates you might successfully avoid boredom by switching from one activity to another. But in doing so you’ll miss what’s on the other side of boredom. You might never know the price you pay for being compelled to distract yourself, for want of having developed a capacity for doing nothing, a productive capacity, at that.

In fact, have you ever asked yourself what boredom actually is?

Surprisingly, your pattern of seeking interest provides an answer. When observing this cycle, it appears interest is what the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti called, “a process of acquisitiveness.” That is, you wouldn’t be interested in anything unless you could acquire something from it. Be honest, unless you believed something obtainable was on offer, you wouldn’t be reading this very article.

While you’re acquiring, your interest endures. But when you’ve exhausted all you can attain from something, you get bored and turn to something else. In fact, the nature of the mind is to absorb and, ironically, in the very act of absorption you’re preparing your own dissatisfaction.

“The urge to be free from boredom,” Krishnamurti continued, “is another form of possession.” Therefore, even trying to be non-acquisitive eventually ties you in knots. So the point isn’t to “cope” with a state of ennui, it’s to dissolve it entirely. [1]

In short, every acquisition is a form of boredom – it’s a vicious circle.

Accordingly, the neuroscientist Sam Harris defines boredom as “a failure to pay attention.” In advocating the practice of meditation, he suggests that something as simple and repetitive as breathing, and even the feeling of boredom itself, can become “an object of blissful contemplation.” [2]

Simply by being aware of boredom, then, you’re somewhat instantly free from it, just as stopping to think, ‘I’m having fun,’ implies you’re not. In this sense, once you learn to meditate, which is merely the act of observing the contents of your consciousness (thoughts, sights, sounds, emotions and so forth) without judgement, you can never be truly bored again.

However, this isn’t to say you’ll stop making decisions. Particular activities will still become wearisome. But when you’re alone with yourself, how do you feel? Are you compelled to be distracted? Or can you find a deep sense of well-being, just by the very fact of being conscious? There’s a vast difference between the two.

Furthermore, the Eastern interpreter Alan Watts shared the tradition of “sitting Zen” (za-zen). To the Western mentality, sitting quietly for long periods seems unbefitting of an intelligent, competent person. [3] Alarmingly, a study published in Science found most of the subjects would rather administer themselves mild electric shocks than sit alone for between six to 15 minutes. [4]

It’s no wonder the French mathematician Blaise Pascal’s most well-known words were: “All of humanity’s problems stem from one’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” [5]

Interestingly, quiet sitting proves most difficult for the contemporary modern who has developed a sensitive intellect and usually deems it either lazy or a waste of precious time. In fact, it’s this very idea we have of time that makes “sitting doing nothing” so irritable for us.

Correspondingly, Watts pointed out: “We are living in a culture entirely hypnotised by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between a causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation.”

We forget, though, that any thoughts we have of either the past or future actually take place right now. Put simply, the past (memory) and future (expectation) both only exist in what we call the present.

This state of present awareness discoverable in za-zen is something Watts calls, “a vivid sensation of “non-difference” between oneself and the external world, between the mind and its contents [...]. Naturally, this sensation does not arise by trying to acquire it; it just comes by itself when one is sitting and watching without any purpose in mind – even the purpose of getting rid of purpose.” [3]

Perverse as it might seem, the deliberately purposeful mentality is its own undoing, since it hurries toward what’s next, missing the object of desire in its path. Without hurrying, purposeless sitting actually gives a point to living: by directly experiencing reality to the full, without treating life as if it were a bank to be robbed.

Nevertheless, we needn’t spend every waking hour sitting quietly. Like anything, psychological research shows too much of a good thing becomes negative. Rather, making time for quiet contemplation provides the necessary balance for creative action.

It’s therefore no coincidence that Bertrand Russell coined the phrase: “fruitful monotony,” where he claimed that true joy is impossible without a relative capacity for undergoing boredom, since excessive excitement “dulls the palate of every kind of pleasure.” [6]

So, if you’re to dissolve boredom once and for all, dare to be bored. As a fitting title to her book, meditation teacher Sylvia Boorstein declared: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” [7]

[1] Krishnamurti, J., 1995. Commentaries On Living Second Series. Wheaton. Ill.: Quest Books.

[2] Harris, S., 2019. The Cure for Boredom. Waking Up.

[3] Watts, A., 1999. The Way Of Zen. New York: Vintage Books, pp.154-6.

[4] EurekAlert!. 2014. Doing Something Is Better Than Doing Nothing For Most People, Study Shows. [online] Available at: https://www.eurekalert.org/pub... .

[5] Pascal, B. and Wight, O., 1890. The Thoughts, Letters, And Opuscules Of Blaise Pascal. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin.

[6] Russell, B., 2006. The Conquest Of Happiness. London: Routledge.

[7] Boorstein,S., 1996. Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There: A Mindfulness Retreat with Sylvia Boorstein. California: Harper One.