“I’m sooo Bored!!!!!!”
That’s how my friends email began. And this was after she had watched two shows, checked Facebook, read the news and all her blog subscriptions, and all while at work.
I figured this common cry to be connected to a deeper sense of alienation. I’m familiar with that discomfort, but I have always held, that in part, this sort of open acknowledgement was a key indicator of ones lack of creativity.
If you say you’re bored, you’re probably just a boring person. Right?
Well, not so fast.
Maybe boredom acts in much the same way our immune system does when warning us of a malfunction, that we did not create, but may also facilitate. For instance…I just finished wiping off a sneeze that escaped onto my computer screen. Which you can now deduce is not only too much information, but also an indicator that I am sick.
Who is to blame for this?
Isn’t boredom just the metaphorical mucus of our soul’s condition? Where what we are capable of meets the constraints of a reality that reveals just how much we are under-challenged in our jobs and life?
(Check out this Challenge vs Skills graph.)
So…what’s the difference between boredom and apathy?
Not only did this email prompt me toward this thought, but I also watched a movie the night before that I may not have ordinarily watched if I weren’t so sick…and maybe a little bored. The Trotsky, a Jacob Tierney comedy, touches on this distinction between boredom and apathy.
Check it out…
In the movie, Leon Bronstein, who feels he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky, seems to frame boredom in a unique perspective, rich with potential, and echoing the words of Walter Benjamin.
“We are bored when we don’t know what we are waiting for…. Boredom is the threshold to great deeds.”
And shouldn’t we be waiting for something more? Wanting something more? And what happens when what we are waiting for…depends on us?
Maybe acting as if we’re perfectly well in the face of that reality signals something far worse than boredom…Apathy?
What do you think?
Written by Veron Graham
Topics: Life