Bore-dom?

Once I asked a boy, when he complained that he was bored,” what is boredom?” He obviously was not interested in an analytical discussion about the subject. So, I thought I would deconstruct this state of mind called boredom.

I found three main aspects to a bored mind.

1. One does not want to be where he or she is and wants to be somewhere else instead. So mentally one is gone already. The energy is projected to somewhere else, and basically displaced from what that person is doing. So, whatever one is doing becomes a restless and halfhearted activity. This will lead to lack of quality in one’s activity which will result in a mood of more dissatisfaction and boredom.

2. Similarly the person wants to do something else instead of what he or she is doing right now. Same kind of displacement happens and the actions result in mediocrity. So, a mind-state of boredom and frustration is inevitable.

3. A person wants to be somebody else. ‘I am not comfortable in my skin, I want to become someone else, like a successful celebrity who is rich and famous' or something like that. This may be an unrealistic expectation. This delusion leads to perpetual state of boredom and discomfort. This is more of a long-term state.

The problem with being complacent with uninvolved activity for a long period is that, it kills the spirit of a person to begin with. Then later even if one gets the chance of his or her lifetime to do what he or she loves to do, the old habit patterns of halfhearted doing may become a hindrance. This may be a generalization but our conditioning to be a misfit might self-sabotage our own effectiveness in reaching our full potential. There may be exceptions, I am sure.

One thing is for sure; a bored person is not an interesting presence at all, because one without much of any purpose does not emanate any energy. We are attracted to energetic beings as life is about abundance and it’s not font of scarcity very much. It’s about expanding into spaciousness than reducing into limitations. Being lively means one loves life and it is always life assuring and life effacing. Living beings want to thrive and expand the possibilities. Basically, viewing from an evolutionary perspective, a complete withdrawal form life is not a relevant model. Instead, any organism that shows this kind of stagnation eventually will perish itself by default, at least that is the common biological pattern we see in nature.

Here is a poem by a five-year-old girl, “I don’t have anything to do now, so maybe I will just sit here and bloom!” This is the natural spirit of humans by birth. Poetry, literature, music, arts and the like, do not consider boredom as an option.