Being Bored

Being Bored

By Kathy Hendricks

“Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sit.” ~ Winnie the Pooh

While attending a recent airshow in our town, my granddaughter wheedled me into using my phone to watch Bugs Bunny cartoons. I rather sheepishly confessed to my daughter that I relented after numerous complaints about being bored. Anna, who closely monitors the amount of screen time her children acquire in a day, responded with, “There’s nothing wrong with being bored.”

It brought to mind the way my mother monitored my screen time. In those days it consisted of watching daytime TV. After a certain period, she simply turned off the set and told me to go outside. My complaint about being bored fell on deaf ears and, lo and behold, once I was outdoors I miraculously found something to engage my imagination.

It’s not entirely clear if A.A. Milne was the original author of the aforementioned quote, but it fits nicely with the laid-back character of his honey-loving bear. This is borne out nicely in Benjamin Hoff’s book, The Tao of Pooh, in which he explains principles of Taoism through Pooh’s interactions with his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood. A classic illustration of why such principles remain foreign to western culture was brought home to me while discussing the book with a group several years ago. One of the participants was a mother of five children and maintained a very active daily routine. She told us it made no sense to her after speed-reading the book in one night.

At this stage in life, I am much more appreciative of the joy of just sitting. Every so often I wander onto our back deck and sit for a while in the sun. It is heavenly to soak in the warmth and let my need for doing anything settle out. Anna’s words come back to me with a reminder that children need to know the importance of unstructured time. As Hoff writes, there is a value in emptiness as it “cleans out the messy mind and charges up the batteries of spiritual energy.” We might find it boring at times but there is truly nothing wrong with that.

Response

by Barbara Anne Radtke

Kathy, I was taken with your daughter’s comment that there is nothing wrong with being bored.  It reminded me of a conversation I had a long time ago with a senior faculty member at a university where I taught in the summer. I was approaching middle age. Arriving on campus for the summer session, I greeted the faculty member whom I had not seen for almost a year: “What’s new and exciting?” I asked. “Nothing, thank God.” she answered!  At the time I thought how boring that was. Now, closer to her age at that time, I understand that if this was boring, it was also welcome.  It meant that it was an ordinary time for which she had hoped: no illness in the family, no tensions on campus, no unrest in the city.  

“Being bored” can be the response to unstructured time, especially when living a life that is very structured because of its demands. Your point about learning how to use unstructured time is well taken, Kathy.  The dictionary describes “bored” as “feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one’s current activity.” Being bored is an attitude. We can learn to make it a signal that it is time to create, to imagine, to make a change. Or, we can learn to enjoy the pause and take the time to renew ourselves. How do you, dear reader, deal with being bored?