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