Absence of boredom

What is boredom? Do we even know that that feels like? We do not have that opportunity any longer, not with these devices in our hands. Please don't think I am going to lecture you on your device, and unplugging and going tech-free. Just thinking out loud here.

When was the last time you just let yourself be? Just let yourself sit in a space, and experience the ebb and flow of life around you? Of watching it, listening to it, no music, no video, no emails, no scrolling. Just letting things flow by. When was it?

I do like to sit and enjoy, look out at the plants, through the leaves, see what might be there. We have bugs galore, snakes (yikes!), geckos and lizards ... and flowers of every color. Little zooming sunbirds and loud calling coucals. The brilliant blue of the kingfisher as he sits on the low branch, contemplating his next prey. Maybe he'll go over to the bath and splash around a little, spruce himself up for his little girlfriend, bring her a worm or a grub. She likes those. I can watch the cat who has adopted our house wander around, meowing to himself, telling himself a story about yard adventures.

We have a magical tree in the yard, one that drops various things in cycles throughout the year. One month it is pink flowers, the next leaves galore. The next are not-even-ripe rose apples, with big bites from the bats that come around to find their favorite wee morning treat. Their screeching and jostling is part of our background song as we sip our morning coffee.

Honestly, one of the things I regret most about the mobile phone is the absence of boredom, the lack of opportunity for the smallest, most mundane undertaking to fill the mind like a passenger air bag, and for its minuscule rewards, its tiny obstructions and sweet resolutions to be communed with fully, without resort to the world of possibilities the phone promises. On the plus side you have the ability to watch a match, live, happening on the other side of the world, while you hurtle through the countryside in a car or a train; you can instantly resolve almost any lapse in brain function (‘who was it who played the different Bonds? Ahhh, of course, there have been seven... ’); you can express your creativity instantly to an theoretically unlimited world of observers, while on the other side of the scales, when was the last time you saw a kid (or a grown up for that matter) lining a fat blade of grass between thumbs to create the most primitive of reeds through which to scrape the ear drums of those in your post code?

Let yourself be bored. Being bored is the beginning of an idea, an opening to possibilities. Being bored is where imagination can take flight. Let the device sit -- especially in another room -- and just sit and let life swirl around you.

“Life is very boring” is a good thing. Boring can be stable and unchanging, and in a world where change is inevitable and sometimes daunting, bored is a boon. Who knows how long it will last? Life, much like a marriage, can lure us into a comfortable state of parasympathetic bliss but don't be a fool; the bumps are right around the corner. For sure, enjoy this cruising speed devoid of disturbances for as long as it lasts.

In fact, I'll go a step further and say that a “generic boring person” is actually a content, emotionally well-regulated person. It’s giving peaceful existence. It’s giving there’s no drama at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with “generic boring person." We can all hope to emulate.

Go forth. Do nothing. Repeat often.