"Relax." Depending on the context, this word can elicit feelings of rage, resentment, or satisfaction. It might seem hard to relax, when your business is being shuttered, your health is on the line, and the normality that we so often take for granted is yanked from beneath us. As humanity and the environment continue to sludge through the chaos day by day in the midst of this pandemic, a silent warrior is standing tall behind us. We find warriors in the health care field, the sanitation departments, and in the delivery trucks of so many companies that are trying their best to keep us all afloat right now. Right now. The present. Moment by moment. This day. And then, the next. As a species with eyes constantly looking ahead and backwards, the present is elusive, more so now with daily life being swept away by instant moments, unremarkable, forgettable, and without gravity. Yes, I'm mostly referring to the often useless screen time that seems to eat up any free time we find ourselves with. For once, we find ourselves truly confronted with 'boredom.' I'd like to dedicate this post to that slow, heavy word.
Think of boredom as a parallel to the verb 'bore'. Think of a large tunnel. Now think of a large machine with a conical piece attached to the front, slowly, mechanically, removing earth from this tunnel. How long is the tunnel? Without really getting into the details of the machine, and the reasons behind digging the tunnel, one may find themselves utterly BORED at the task. It may seem that there is no end in sight to the tunnel's completion. The spinning rotors just keep spinning. The machine keeps grinding. In a way, this is how life often feels. My statement there is generalized, and more so personal. But I promise, I swear, there are better ways to fight it. It just takes effort. Without input, there can be no output. So why does swiping at screens like cats do with string seem to effortless? Because it is. And instead of receiving from this unconscious effort, we find ourselves the host of external leaches. We feed off of our screens for the perpetually invisible satisfaction from likes, well cropped photos, and new followers. We feed off of the mechanical pings from notifications, sounds of mechanical birds in a digital world. I'm going off track now, but I prefer to write these posts in a free form way, to purge the clutter of angsty, helpless thoughts I feel about the state of the world, and how the culture of our society is terribly evolving around narcissistic desires and motives. I desire change, I know we all do. But it takes effort to change course, whether that's internal or external. Back to boredom. For once, I see the world forced to get comfortable with boredom, to uproot it from it's lowly place on the totem pole of states of being. For once, we are all bored. It's a choice, to take the time to dig into the soil of your soul, plant seeds for change, nourish a new way of being, because before long, we will all emerge from this nightmare, with a new perspective on EVERYTHING. For now, relax in the boredom. Let it take you. Let the feeling of boredom evolve into a productive force. Treat it as an ally right now, because it's a house guest that will be here for a while.
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