Boredom

Boredom: A lack of stimulation to keep the mind occupied or amused. We’ve become such an advanced race that can talk to people 3,000 miles away instantly, fly into space and even predict the future (of the weather, I mean, though not with 100% accuracy) yet we still succumb to such a primitive state and need to be entertained, almost like children. It might not be a bad thing, though. Boredom makes us seek new, different things and once upon a time did someone not say ‘variety is the spice of life?’ It seems to me that it’s a need that’s built into our psyche since the dawn of time and it makes sense once you think about it.
All around us we’re bombarded by the fantastic and the unrealistic: ‘Avatar’, ‘Harry Potter’ and even the musical stylings of Lady GaGa give us a sense of variety and unrealism to our lives. Further thinking upon this has led me to ponder something bigger though. What if the variety we crave is not variety at all but escapism? The need to be anywhere but ‘here’. Assuming that this is the case, I then pondered that perhaps deep down in our subconscious minds we all have the desire or the need, the compulsion, to run and escape from wherever we are. A good example of this is the typical teenager constantly dreaming of bigger things, the day they leave home or the day then can travel the world. They have constant thoughts, desires and dreams to escape. Just where exactly would they be escaping from or to though? It could be a plethora of things depending on the person or the situation. It could be from parents, as in the above example, or purely to be somewhere more exciting so it’s safe to think that the place and purpose changes for each person. An inquisitive mind may seek answers, a religious one may seek enlightenment and someone with a dark past may seek an escape from that.
The first thing that came to my mind was the thought that this constant desire of escapism, no matter what, is the human mind constantly trying to be away from the one thing it can’t: The World.
In a strange twist of thought the world both gives and takes away boredom as we try to both escape it and explore it. The world is finite, though, with many limitations and rules of both reality and man that bind us. Perhaps the best place to recede in these times of boredom is into ourselves, into our own minds where there are no limits, only boundaries that we ourselves place there. It is from the mind that our escapist arts of film, music, books and images stem from, brought into the real world with tricks and manipulations to make them seem real. They all came to be real but they started in the limitless, escapist reality of our minds. Further revelation now makes me think that perhaps our desire is not to escape the world but, for some at least, to transform the world and bring the unhindered world of our minds to reality.
When I set out to write this I was bored, ironically. Retreating into my mind to ponder the lack of entertainment has stirred up quite a number of different, dare I say, interesting ideas that I hope you also find interesting. For now though I must end here. My parents want me to finish writing and, in further irony, are getting bored and have decided to play cards. For those of you now thinking ‘well they’re not retreating into their minds at all’ I draw this to your notice: Without the mind giving meaning and rules to those cards then there would not be a game at all to abate boredom =)

- Aiden

Relationships Revisited

If you’ve read a post of mine a few entries back then, I believe, it will mention a certain someone in my life that likes me and whom I like back. To update the gossips among you, we have decided to stay friends for now, though I feel that this is quickly changing and some of the conversations we’ve had as of late have led me to question relationships and my views on them.
To dive right in at the deep end we talked about sex. ‘Intercourse’, ‘shagging’, ‘the horizontal monster mash’, yes, sex. We weren’t talking about sex as if one of us had just said ‘So, Saturday night. How about it? ;)’ it wasn’t like that at all, it did come up in the conversation as a natural change of subject. I refuse to say what subject preluded it but it wasn’t anything sinister or bad. Anyway, we were talking about sex and this person said that just because we weren’t dating that sex wasn’t wrong and that it could even help. Confused, I asked how and their reply was that it could help start a proper relationship between us.
Now my view prior to this was that a relationship that started from sex would never be a lasting one and so it should not happen. I think that sex is a part of relationships…but it shouldn’t rule it and a relationship should not be purely about it. It can be nice, I admit, but my fear is that if a relationship became too focussed on it then it will ultimately amount to nothing. Afterwards, though, I started to ponder my views on relationships as well as what this person had said and I came to a few conclusions.
First, that my views on relationships weren’t necessarily ‘right’. Every person, situation and relationship is different and what works for me and one individual might be completely different to what works between me and a second individual. So I thought that perhaps having strict, set rules or views towards relationships wasn’t the best attitude. Looking at it from this point of view I managed to justify it: I’m young and I don’t know everything about relationships including what’s the best or the worst ways to start them. With that in mind how can I have strict, set views so early on? My conclusion was that I should perhaps be more easy going and open minded about these kinds of things because I’ve never experienced them before and, well, they could be good for all I know.
My second realisation was that sex wouldn’t really be the start of a relationship between the two of us. It might help to directly pinpoint when a romantic relationship ‘officially’ started but we’ve been friends for a while now, which is a form of relationship, and for the past few weeks there has been the awareness between each other of how we feel. So although sex might be a way to physically pin point when the romantic part of a relationship begins, we’ve been ‘dating’ in a way for the past few weeks since we knew of each other’s feelings and we’ve been friends that have enjoyed each other’s company for a few months before that.
I’m not under any assumptions or impressions that a relationship with this person will last forever because people and things change and I can’t predict the future (if I could I wouldn’t be writing a blog, that much I know!)… but I would always prefer a longer relationship to a shorter one and I really like this person. What’s preferable or ideal is not always an option though, so whatever happens between me and them will happen however it does. I can hope, want and wish as much as I like but only time will tell. It may amount to nothing or it may amount to something… but it seems that time will give me my answer soon enough.

- Aiden

Comfort

What is comfort? As far as I’ve been able to describe it in general terms, comfort is a feeling of neutrality or wellbeing in regards to a situation. When moving towards specifics though you soon realise that comfort is not restricted to a situation and it is not necessarily determined by how you feel but, rather, your feelings are an indicator of how comfortable you are.

For example: A man hands you a gun and tells you to shoot someone. The reason you (hopefully) would not shoot the person is because you have firm morals that tell you not to and you know it to be a bad thing and so you won’t do it. You will feel uncomfortable or negative about this situation but the reason you feel uncomfortable is because your morals disagree with the situation. Your feelings are reflecting your moral disagreement and this is uncomforting for you.

From this example we can take that morals are one deciding factor on comfort, right? Other factors I’ve found to affect comfort are obvious, expected things such as the feeling of things around you and conversations or imagery but there are some more subtle things that affect comfort such as mental outlook and health. What made me receptive to noticing these things is because, lately, I’ve been having trouble sleeping and I’ve found the entire ritual of sleep very uncomfortable and sleep to be quite distressful. The reason for this is that I realised not too long ago that I’d been having a recurring dream. It does not happen every night but it happens occasionally and it’s a dream that reflects my subconscious, I feel, or it coincidentally reflects some fears and insecurities I’ve had for quite some time now.

In this situation I’m feeling uncomfortable with sleep because it has given me bad experiences and I don’t want to undergo them once more, so fear here is a subtle factor for comfort. After this realisation I began to look out for more ‘factors’ of comfort and determined some of the aforementioned few.
For the curious among you, by the way, my dream is waking up covered in deep purple stretch marks all over my body. This is horrific, for me, because I can recall when I was younger and fatter and I wasn’t really aware of my body in the slightest…but then one day I noticed some stretch marks on my hips but didn’t think anything of it. When I got back from a two week holiday I looked at them again and they had gotten bigger, as had I, and there was a long, deep, purple mark on the lower part of my stomach. The feeling of embarrassment and shame for letting my gluttony consume me as it had will never leave me and, if I ever feel like I’ve gained weight, I still look at myself to check that I don’t have any. So it’s safe to say I have a few body issues, that’s true, but I had never considered it to be deep set enough to manifest itself as a recurring dream and it’s only when I realised it was a recurring dream that sleep began to scare me.

Relating all of my digression back to comfort, though, my discomfort with sleep will probably not go away completely until I’ve dealt with those underlying issues that are causing it. I suppose a good first step to doing that is actually admitting the problem I have: I have a recurring dream brought on by body issues. How I can deal with it after this, though, is not going to be as easy and I’m not entirely sure how I might do it. There’s only one way to do it though and that’s to try. So try, I will.

- Aiden