When the world isn't as bright as Technicolor
Postcards by Elle blog wonders if 21st century culture's forgotten the value of boredom—silent contemplation of the mundane, subtle, and natural. Maybe it's because we're constantly bombarded with technological stimulation and comm's, especially in Silicon Valley. Or that it's become too easy to satisfy our every desire. But it's time to bring bored back.
When I was five or six, my dad would leave for work at the crack of dawn, and being a light sleeper all throughout my early childhood, my eyes flew open at the sound of the door. I felt my pupils dilate to adjust to the dark, like a nocturnal animal of sorts, and crept out of my room into the living room on tiptoes. Our couch was pressed against the wall right below the window, and I would rest my chin against its back and watch the world come alive inch by inch.
The London sun was sluggish and somnolent, especially in the wintertime, but it would eventually get there ... I reveled in the quiet ...
Eventually, I grew out of doing this when I slept through the sound of the door clicking shut behind my father, but I sought that feeling of having the whole world to myself elsewhere while growing up; going to the park and staring at the ducks on a bench, finding the most isolated corner of the library with a book in hand, staring at the moon and making up stories about what was going on up there ... I had a fascination and borderline obsession with boredom, the almost torturous first few minutes followed by a calm in my heart—something which evaporated when I got my first smartphone at thirteen. ...
This is not to say that social media is monolithically terrible and every remnant of it must be done away with ... because the world has irreversibly become a place where we cannot exist without them. ...
[M]y phone is now an extension of me. My entire life is on there, from work emails to social media platforms to texts from friends. This has bred a nervousness that was previously not there before ... As soon as I began to feel my attention span withering away like a cut flower without water, I was forced to step back and ruminate on what has changed regarding my behavior. ...
Boredom almost unilaterally carries a negative connotation—if you are bored, you need to figure out a way to fill that boredom with something, which sometimes simply includes opening the same fridge over and over every five minutes just to see if new food has magically spawned on the shelf. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse because we have talked about this topic into oblivion, but perhaps this is indicative of the instant gratification society that we have turned into. Even using AI and generative AI as a solution to everything without thinking for a second is symptomatic of this. I always say that a walk outside in the sunlight can be a quick fix to so many problems, and that’s because living in the digital world, with constant stimulation from social media posts and playlists and podcasts in our ears, sometimes makes us lose the ability to quite literally touch grass.
A 2017 article explains this feeling of boredom as ‘ecological boredom’, saying “because we’re bombarded with increasing doses of glamour, glitz, buzz, celebrity, hype, and excitement, we initially find the natural world mundane”, which feels even more true eight years later. ... In short, we have quite literally forfeited our ability to feel awe for overstimulation from content. And awe is arguably the most important emotion we can have.
Boredom is seen more as a void and a black hole in our lives instead of a blank canvas that can transform into something new and something creative. In a complete vacuum of distractions and outside noise, we are able to think in depth, create more freely, and form clear opinions of our own. Our attention spans are shrinking as we use the instant gratification of social media and short form content as a quick fix to the few initial discomforting moments of being bored. Boredom is as important for our personhood as much as any other emotion, but we’ve become afraid of silence and only hearing our own thoughts. ...
Trying to learn how to be bored again quite literally feels like having to painfully detox the addiction of avoiding being bored at all costs, and rewire my brain into seeing boredom as a positive quality again.
Is doing this difficult? Yes. But do I absolutely dread what my life will be if I don’t learn how to be bored and learn how to think again? Absolutely. Boredom is agitating and even unnerving sometimes. What’s even more terrifying to me though, is the notion that I will one day self medicate myself with mind numbing media so much to the point where I am incapable of forming my own opinions. Don’t you agree that it is the fastest way to self sabotage and ruin your intellect and your ability to discern what is and is not important in life, or to feel awe?
Read the whole thing here.
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