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Boredom: Urban Legend or Holy Grail? Sometimes you will hear the elders speak of it in reverent tones. A time and place they swear existed and we've forgotten. A world without cell phones and fax machines and email and PDAs and remote controls. It is said of those times that the scent of roses was highly valued. Do we dare ever admit that we might possibly be bored? Aren’t we supposed to be better than that? Busier than that? Smarter than that? More self-actualized than that? Even depression, the downside of bipolar disorder, so prevalent in creative and artistic types, is a more “respectable” condition. Bipolars at least get to experiment with pharmaceuticals and have something to talk about at cocktail parties.
Generally, rules for “living well” are rules of engagement. Whether we’re attending to our Hierarchy of Needs (Maslow), Healing our Inner Child (Bradshaw) or mastering our Stages of Psychological Development (Erikson), I’ll be damned if there isn’t always something to do. How dare any of us, even infrequently, wallow in the low-brow mind-muckery of boredom?
Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics (in case you’ve forgotten your high school physics) states that: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion; objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Theoretically then, when we risk stopping to smell the proverbial roses, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Or maybe that’s a thorn in our foot. Regardless, we are stripped of our momentum and that foot is quite useless.
Now we’ve gone and done it, Alice! We are deadlocked, in freeze frame, stupefied, down for the count, stuck in neutral, thunderstruck, at a stand still. We are a solitary petrified rock in the perpetual rock and roll hustle of our postmodern culture, where busy, busy, busy, is the buzz, and everybody is buzzing.
We are, pray for our wicked souls, zweet jezuz…..bored!
Or are we?
Kristofferson’s Second Law of Busted Flat in Baton Rouge Dynamics (in hopes you’ve forgotten your Me and Bobby McGee lyrics) states that: Boredom is just another word for nothing left to do. Theoretically then, since there is always and forever something to do, boredom is not the stuff of bullets and thorns, but of legend and myth. A modern day Holy Grail, if you will.
So if we find ourselves with a momentary empty pocket, a fleeting blank page, a sudden mute cacophony—between all the heres and theres and these and those and whats and whens and hows and whos—maybe we should grab on, hold tight and don’t dare blink our eyes.
Because it will be gone before we know it, and we best be smelling those damn roses while we have the chance. Yes, Virginia, there is a Silent Pause. Call it the Holy Grail, an Urban Legend or just plain Boredom. Whatever it is, if we’re lucky enough to catch even a magical moment of it?
Carpe momentum!
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