Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Be Bored
by Michelle Katz
I have been hearing a lot about boredom lately. Bored in relationship, afraid to retire because of potential boredom, bored when alone at a restaurant. I listen and watch as people avoid boredom. Interpreting boredom in relationship as not working, staying in a job that’s sucking the life out of them, scrolling on their phones in order to avoid any sense of this very important experience. In my observations and listening I cannot help but see the disconnection from self in the desire to avoid boredom.
I am truly a believer in the wisdom of boredom, it can be the birthplace of genius, if only we approached it as such.
We live in a world full of distractions. Daily, I recognize my shortcomings in this world. I cannot keep up with all the waves of communication I receive, plus the 24 hour news and social media cycle. For someone who values boredom...this is all too much. I am distracted to the point that I cannot find presence. My partner, on weekend days, use to wake up asking questions like “what are we going to do today? Where are we going? What should we do with the dogs? How do you want to get there?” I ask him these questions jokingly and preemptively when we sit down for Saturday morning coffee and we laugh. He has grown increasingly more comfortable with just being in the year and a half we have known each other. What makes us so uncomfortable with unstructured time to truly be?
The amazing thing to me is that there is actually so much that happens in what we would call “bored” space! I learn this again and again and especially during 10 day meditation retreats and wilderness quests, where boredom is central to the experience. In these times, yes there is an unbelievable amount of time spent considering the struggle of every moment, noticing all the discomforts, letting the mind wondering into worry until your face becomes a big pimple, picking dirt from your finger nails with the pine needle you find beside you. But beyond the discomfort, which comes in waves, there is also the incredible realization that so much is happening when you are doing nothing! There are all these sensations in the body we never pay attention to that are truly magnificent and when noticed, can be all encompassing, sparking curiosity, interest and presence. On quest, there are all these way in which you come awake to the world alive around you and in the realization of that you too become awake to your own aliveness, knowing life is beautiful and precious.
This morning I walk out on the land, my daily walk for years now, and especially with public lands currently closed, it has become a bit mundane to me. I go over the first hill and plopped down into the first arroyo, fighting the urge to take this time to call a friend or my mom (something to distract the boredom). I see the way the shadows and sunlight make up my path. Staying with the boredom makes me awake to the present. I see a piece of litter (more now than ever with the high winds we have had) I pick it up to see it’s an answer page of a college board prep-test book, algebra answers explained in detail. I look up to the sunlit and juniper shaded arroyo, algebra answers in hand. I smile at this truly unique moment. I cannot help but think about how this page landed here, and the potentially bored teen who studied from that book, perhaps ripping this page out due to frustration. I carried it with me.
I climb to the top of a hill to my sit spot, where I speak words that are habit, meaningful but somewhat boring in the recital, after years of the same blessings. My dogs await for me ready to move, but I stay in it. I remember my last week’s writings about the Uvalde shooting as I look at the dead and living trees surrounding me. I remind myself to never forget these continual shootings, to feel them fully, to not allow them to become commonplace and to not forget it in two weeks time because all that is in place to distract us to do so. I look at the small rocks around my sit spot that I collected overtime. I imagine the cut of one particular rock was once an almost perfect square one side having sharp edged and the other side with well rounded edges. I contemplate perfection and how it never lasts, something cuts it and we must then figure out how to cope. What we do when perfection leaves is what matters. I place it next to my other collected rocks to honor this truth. I walk on, impressed with how the path I created with my steps has truly craved into the landscape. A testament to walking the same path over and over without deviation. The repetition is now hard to break and could have unintended consequences on the landscape.
I wonder about not only how I greet the two rocks to my left or the two infant pinon I walk between, these landmarks like friends guiding my way, but also how bored they may be, how they meet my passing. Life is not simply about our experience of the world but how the world around us experiences us as well. Perhaps I am the highlight of their day. Perhaps the movement through the boredom of our days could provide the most pivotal moment for someone along our way? Boredom seems to evaporate when I can see the world in the lives of other beings.
I take my usual route, but backward, utterly and totally inspired by my 13 year old dog’s decision to walk down the path we usually take back to the house. She looks back at me with a smile and I surrender to this invitation for something slightly different. The same path taken in a different direction can feel like a different path. I love that simple truth. Perspective is up to us and can color everything.
We meander through the juniper and pinon, familiar yet different, and drop down to the second arroyo, wider and more wild. I remembered seeing a healthy and beautiful coyote here just last night, the dogs strangely unaware of her until much later, as if her appearance was only meant for me. It is hard to not initially feel fear at the sight of her, but then it settled into curiosity. I worried about my dogs for a moment and stayed in one spot holding their collars. The coyote looked straight at me, a clear message of the trickster while I hold my questions about boredom and the stories of friends and family avoiding it. She pranced happily by and then was out of sight between the bush. As if she said, “Bored? Ha! Just stay still, that is when things happen.”
I heed this good advice this morning, I sit on the arroyo floor, the dogs, ahead of me, turn around to see me sitting still and come to sit down beside me, one on each side. Staying still, (what some may perceive as boring), that’s when things happen! The birds have a whole conversation, I get to ease drop on their events, joys and alertness. When you think nothing is happening, just listen to birds. I notice the growth of the trees over the years I have walked here, so much growth, seemingly slow as if nothing is happening, trees are always changing, adapting, learning how to be their full selves! Windstorms, rainstorms, snowstorms all come to rattle them a bit but they seem most content in the quiet still moments. I see that what has fallen dead has become new homes and the place of new life, lifelessness is actually a whole world of aliveness. I hear a pregnant silence that I know is the sounds of the process of creation. I pet my dogs and their desire to move seems to subside, perfectly content and in the feeling of love. I cannot help but smile at the beauty of boredom.
Staying still in boring relationship can stimulate the creation a new element of relationship, a new spontaneity to listen to, a new slow and quiet of growth, a presence with love. Retiring to embrace boredom can reveal a life in which you finally live what you value, knowing what is most important to you. Not grabbing for your phone when alone at the restaurant, you may actually hear the laughter from across the room that actives your joy. Take a new preservative on your usual “boring” path and bring your loyal companions with you because love is needed no matter what. Boredom is our greatest ally, it asks us not to create distraction but rather to become wildly creative and utterly present. I don’t know about you, but to me, this is an amazing opportunity we seem to frequently miss.
The mentorship groups provide unstructured time to connect to self and creativity. The summer session starts July 11th. Explore time outside to explore the beauty of what is within.