24-Apr-2020
Humans are funny creatures. Even the wealthiest among us can get bored. Try eating the finest Russian sturgeon caviar for every meal and see how long before one craves for anything else. Of course, for the average worker/person, boredom is very much part and parcel of life. Chances are, you have a job you don’t quite like, doing the same monotonous task over and over, or perhaps you live life by a routine that you must follow. So, in response, you binge on TV, take a holiday or two, buy stuff on the internet, all to distract yourself from your current realities. Of course, these measures only have limited effectiveness and so you quickly move onto planning your next holiday, watch another TV series and wait for your next shopping package in the mail. Then here comes the rub, when it comes to money, as you don’t all the trappings of wealth, you moan about not being able to afford to pay for all the other entertainments and fun stuffs you wanted. So, at the end of the day, you are still bored – with what you have gotten and haven’t gotten.
At the time of writing, most of the world is in some form of lock down and restrictions. That is, there are rules and laws stating what you can or cannot do. Even if you could afford a holiday but the borders are closed. Even if you can scrimp for a cappuccino with friends but social distancing means you can’t. The end result is, there is now a limit of choices imposed upon you and because you can’t do whatever you wanted to do or do what you normally do, your boredom is now higher than ever before.
To be clear: if your health or finances are badly affected by the covid-19 crisis, your issues are one of survival and not boredom. If that is the case, Yours Truly wish you resilience and strength to overcome and please do reach out & seek help. The human species’ greatest strength is the ability to work together and overcome in both good times and bad. There is always hope, provided you are willing to participate and contribute. On the other hand, if you happen to be mere bored, then it is very likely that you still have your money/income and possibly have little clue or don’t care about the suffering of others.
It is ironic that we find boredom to be in such bad taste/company, after all in the grand scheme of things, the very ways most of us construct our lives is a road to the ultimate boredom. For example, most of us are against changes, as we like things to be the way they are. We like security and want to feel safe. We want governments to do everything for us so that we have to put in very little effort ourselves. Another way to look at this is to think of ourselves as the next zoo animal.
Zoo animals (at least in developed countries’ zoos) by its very nature live in a protected environment, with no fear of predators or worry about food or water. Health is looked after by vets and animals are generally well treated and live to ripe old age. The very things a lot of people have been seeking. With the Covid-19 crisis upon us, governments have done just that, people are now holed up inside their homes for their own protection. So now people are ‘safe’ and live in a constant – just like a zoo animal in the confines of their own 4 walls, yet people are complaining they are bored. Talk of have your cake and eat it.
Of course, you might say, “I didn’t ask to be locked up”, or you rather take your chances with the virus and chat ‘Liberty or Death’. That’s all great if all your decision affects you only but sadly, your decisions have wider impacts onto others and even followed by deadly consequences. Get this fact, you are not the centre of the universe and the world does not revolve around you. Yes, freedom is important but freedom also comes with social responsibility.
Regardless, you are bored because your very own important little world has gotten into a pause. As much as you blame someone else for your current dilemma, be it President Trump or President Xi or even WHO, it does not change the fact that you are the one with the issues – that of less freedom and more boredom. You are bored now because previously, throughout your life, you have craved for distractions and you’ve gotten it in spades. However, as the choices have now dwindled due to lock downs and social distancing, the various options to alleviate boredom had shrink considerably and it just so happens, the one thing you wanted to do right now is a bust. Put simply, like a child with singular focus on a particular toy, even though there are plenty of other toys to choose from, by not getting the very thing you wanted right now, you felt your world has ended in that instant, hence throwing the adult version of a tantrum, which is whining about being bored.
Another point is that by being distracted so much, as a collective, we have lost the use of our faculty, our imagination. We no longer think for ourselves and rely on others to think for us. We defer to others & their products to entertain us. In short, a large part of society has thus become useless and are unable to deal with the slightest change or challenge. It might sound strange or old fashioned to some of you but before iPad, Youtube and social media was invented, people did just fine. For example, there are kids with no access to modern amenities and their play/games are still fun and enthralling to them, perhaps because they had to use their imagination and is thus rewarded. Maybe it is time to exercise your brain a bit more.
Another unescapable conclusion with being bored is, it stems from the fact that a lot of us are essentially adrift with no purpose and no direction in life. We are just existing, hoping for some miracles and while we wait, we casually fill our time with useless distractions to pass the time. Sad to say, Yours Truly does fall into this category from time to time and so far, it’s been a long wait for such miracles and he is still waiting.
Bottom line is, you should not be bored because there is so much to be done. You can help yourself first and foremost by living a better life by doing things that matter. Or you can help others who are less fortunate than yourselves. There is definitely no shortage of things that needed to be done and should have been done yesterday. Boredom should be a reframed as a sign, a prompt to nudge you into action. Having boredom creep up on you means you are not doing enough and that is a sad indictment of your current life.
The take away is, if you have a real and true purpose, then every waking seconds should be spent in pursuing that purpose and there wouldn’t be time left for you to feel bored. Being bored means you have not succeeded in finding a purpose or worst, too lazy to work on your purpose. So take this moment to recognise boredom is merely a symptom of a deeper disease, that is you are in need of some soul searching for a real purpose and the courage to take action & follow through. Take heart, it is a very common problem but also very curable. All it takes is to acknowledge you can push yourself further and you can do more.
Struggle Perpetual 