Boredom

Some mornings I wake up with an idea already percolating.  Sometimes my morning walks bring things into focus.  Sometimes  I just sit and stare into space.  That was this morning.  As I stared out the window, I reached for one of my collections of sayings and read, “Writing is like driving a car at night.  You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” (E.L. Doctorow) 

That’s all it took.  My mind went from driving a car at night to a TED talk which stressed the importance of boredom.  Most truly important insights seem to come out of the blue, the speaker insisted,  because it is when we are bored that our minds have time to make crucial connections.  If I remember correctly, Einstein came up with his concept of relativity while waiting for a train.

One of the great tragedies of modern life is that we allow technology to fill all the empty spaces in our day.  Now, instead of simply waiting in the car for the kids to get out of school or standing in line, we pull out our cell phones and scroll through facebook, twitter, and news feeds.  We’d be so much better off if we just accepted down time as a gift.  After all, staring into space and giving our overactive brains a rest is very healthy.  Instead we’ve become passive recipients of whatever we see or hear on our cell phones or computers. Boredom is good!

Many have the TV on all day where it becomes white noise.  We spent hours on our cell phones and computers.  It’s no wonder we’re tired, stressed, and can’t sleep.  Whether conscious of it or not, we are constantly taking in background sounds  and information.  That’s precisely why people learning a foreign language often listen to tapes while sleeping.   Our brains are just like computers; they feed back what we put into  them. That’s why boredom and sleep is so important.  Our brains need time to absorb what we experience and see.  Many a song has been written, a painting visualized, a business decision been made while sleeping or on a long commute.  It’s when we sleep or zone out that our brains are able to make critical connections, fill in a missing piece, sort out our feelings, reactions, and experiences.

Albert Einstein once observed that “any fool can know.  The point is to understand.”   And to understand, we have to occasionally stop the world and get off, space out, feel bored, or focus on just being.  It’s a bit like a call to worship we sometimes use.  “Be still and know that I am God.  Be still and know that I am.   Be still and know.  Be still.  Be”