- When I am uncomfortable, I seek distraction to pass the time. Would it be be more beneficial to set my attention on my inner pain, to notice the pain and discomfort and noise as the focus of my present awareness?
- When I am in line, the best experiences I have had have been connecting with others in the same predicament, making eye contact or beginning a conversation or sharing messages that reinforce our solidarity in the face of absurd rules that keep us trapped here.
- Surely I can learn to appreciate my mind as it is working, to watch it in a state of gratitude and wonder. Getting up to walk or do a minute of intense exercise or play the piano can be a way to manage my internal creative process, creating space for the idea or the paragraph or the algorithm to emerge.
A restaurant waiter today is assigned more tables than he can attend to, and he has no time to spare. But consider that the word's origin comes from a culture with a different pace of life, before optimal efficiency became a religion, before money became the common denominator of all our values, before the mindset of capitalism had metastasized to dominate every aspect of our lives.
A restaurant's patron could expect that there would be a person assigned to respond to his whims and fancies in the moment, not to hover about the table but to remain attentive within earshot so that whenever the patron desired service, he could respond without delay.
Through the 19th Century in Britain and Europe, people of modest wealth (not just the super-rich) routinely employed butlers and valets, maids and household servants who lived as adjunct family members, having traded their freedom and status for a lifetime of security and a pace of work that was often not overly taxing. Their job was indeed to be available, to spend most of their time waiting for instructions, being ready to act with alacrity when called upon. I don't think that they routinely experienced boredom.
Consider the common expectation that we are busy. Beginning with an infant's feeding schedule and nap schedule, we accustom children to time structures, so that by the time they are ready for kindergarten, they are amenable to a time for reading, a time for drawing, a time for recess, a time for napping. By the time we are out of grade school we have absorbed the necessity of "using our time" efficiently, and we have ceased to question whether time is a scarce commodity to be budgeted, or is it the ocean in which our lives are swimming? If Friday comes around and you don't have plans for your weekend, do you feel uneasy with the implication that you may be less important or less in demand than others whose dance cards were filled in long ago?
Machines have taken away the need for human servants to perform many of the tasks we require for everyday comfort. But today, even machines are kept busy by the capitalists, as a way to increase efficiency and maximize profits. You may have a vacuum cleaner and a food processor that are used just a few minutes each week, but the factory owner who has invested in expensive equipment may feel a need to employ shift workers so that the equipment is in use 24/7, and the airlines have made a science out of scheduling to keep their craft in the air.
The words "bored", "boring" and "boredom" appear nowhere in all of Plato. 2000 years later, Shakespeare uses "bored" and "boring" exactly once each, and both times refer to boring a hole through the earth. It would seem that boredom is a modern affliction. To "be a bore" meaning "to be tiresome or dull" first occurs in print in 1768, and at that time it is not about an absence of stimulus, but rather a grating, persistent irritation.
That doesn't mean that before 1768 the prospect of sitting quietly or walking through a quiet meadow was regarded as inherently blissful. But it does suggest that there was nothing wearisome about unscheduled time, time without a goal, time spent comfortably in the absence of notable stimulus to the senses. This time passed in intimate relation with the self might be tortured or it might be blissful or anything in between. At root, it is the un-dyed texture of the living moment, the fabric of which life is made. It is, in the last analysis, all that we have.
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