Boredom and Wonder

Boredom is to our emotions, what hunger is to our stomach.

Boredom is the opposite of interest. Same old, same old. No emotional response, no intensity. No fire, not even smoke.

 

When we look at it closely, boredom seems to describe the state of our feelings, and not the actual experience. An interesting fact is that we normaly use expressions such as: "Walking is boring." and not "I feel this boring feeling when I think of walking."

As to why do we experience this 'unpleasant' feeling?

We might experience boredom because we humans (at least the majority of people I know of), tend to think too much (and lose contact with our emotions, among other things), instead of actually living an experience. We think the experience in our heads, over and over again. We make assumptions, we think we know, and so we create this (what feels like) ‘boring’ train of thought that’s always activating when having a somewhat similar experience, and so we miss the point, we miss the experience. We’re hitting a dead end.

 

It also has to do with our way of living. To many things to do, quantity over quality. One can go [almost] anywhere in the world in less than 24 hours, provided that one has the $ to do so, or at least one can watch a video of the desired place.

Smartphones, technology, videos, people to meet and see, movies to watch, planes to catch, games to play, and so on. I believe they all (used in an immature manner, and we all know how to do that) contribute to our growing inability to wonder, and instead we become addicted to entertainment.

 

But what might be the opposite of boredom?

Wonder. We can learn how to wonder again. We can learn how to be grateful. We can observe our suroundings, in silence. We can look at the clouds for a few minutes a day, and observe, appreciate. We can gaze at the stars, now and then. Where’s the rush? We’re all going to die anyway.

One can eventually manage his attention, and learn how to be wherever he is, not only with his body, but with his mind and senses also.

This ability to wonder, of course, requires time. And it might (ironically) seem boring to learn it. It might require of one to study it’s own boredom, to become comfortable with it, to plunge into it, and find new ways to experience.

But what's the alternative?

As I said before, Boredom is to our emotions, what hunger is to our stomach. And we have the option to consume junk food (so many entertaining and shallow experiences) quickly with long term and negative effects on our mental and emotional health, or learn how to cook and eat healthy food (Learn how to have/spend quality time, even in our most trivial affairs).

It takes many years for a person to learn how to be bored. We’re not getting bored as children, we all can agree on that, but then we get introduced to technology and cartoons (or whatever many and diverse distractions there may be) were everything happens in an instant, and so the outer world becomes dull in the view of our thinking -and we identify very much with our thinking-, et voila!

What’s the alternative to Wonder? Well this. An increasing hunger for more, and it’s either that we 'eat' and rush our way through experiences towards a zombie way of life, or feeling bored when not doing it.