With so many events cancelled now, and so many people in isolation, socially staying as far away from others as possible, and really not doing anything that involves actual human contact, there really is a new wave of boredom that is passing through these communities, as people suddenly have this extra time that had been put into these shared activities.
Now what are they gonna do? And for some people even their work is being cancelled, or if they’re working from home, so much more opportunity to slack off and find new ways to pass the time.
So in my younger days I probably would have been happy to just get into a computer game and really just enjoy having this extra time without really feeling any pressure to go out and do anything.
It’s like this automatic hermitage where we’re being encouraged to be alone.
But now that I don’t do those escapist pastimes, I don’t have that option of filling my time with things like that.
Now suddenly I have this extra time in which I, well, what am I going to do? I think so many people are in this situation.
Either immediately filling the time with things like games and TV, watching shows, getting lost in gaming, or- well, what else? Gaming and TV: I guess those are really the big lonely escape mechanisms that we have.
You can let me know if there’s other major escapes that you can think of.
If we don’t go into that, though.
If we don’t use this time to simply escape into escapist entertainment, then suddenly we’re faced with being bored.
Suddenly boredom becomes this very powerful force.
And now that I’ve forced myself to accept the boredom, rather than simply distracting myself with escapism, it’s interesting to see the effects of this boredom.
Now at first, of course, it’s quite unpleasant, because, well, boredom is not a fun thing.
It’s the lack of fun, the feeling that something’s missing, and I really want something more to fill my time, something more stimulating.
But over time, after a few days of this, as I got used to a bit of this reduced sensation, this feeling that time is moving more slowly, time is dragging on a little bit, there’s more of this relaxed pace to the day, because with less to do, you can kind of stretch everything out a little bit, and do everything in a bit more of a free, leisurely pace.
And I’m finding there’s something very positive about this that I’m experiencing, that it almost feels like going back in time to simpler times when there was less stimulating entertainment all around us, and we could be entertained by simple things, like just, you know, looking at nature, and that that could be itself a satisfying thing to do.
Whereas now, it’s often hard to imagine simply appreciating nature.
For many people, just it’s hard to really appreciate because the stimulation is so slow.
You know, watching the sunlight move, and the shadows slowly creep over the ground: I mean this is like watching grass grow.
I mean, how can that possibly compare to the flashing lights and sounds and action and all this carefully developed entertainment that it’s compared to? But once we can get used to this kind of boredom, just accept a little bit of boredom, then it seems like it can open us up to really experiencing and enjoying a more simple pace of life.
Which in itself has its benefits of just being able to enjoy the simple things again.
And also, it seems like it leaves us open.
It leaves us open to more, to better be able to understand how we feel.
Instead of always covering up how we feel constantly with distraction, we can just let the moment happen and have nothing in it.
Hard to believe, it sounds so simple, and yet seems so out of reach most of the time.
But now it seems like we have a special chance to be able to embrace boredom and see where it can lead.
So I’d be curious to hear: are you bored in this situation? And how is it working for you?
#boredom #slowlife #bored