In Praise of Boredom

 

 

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

For trying to change the system from within

I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

 

1. Cohen

 

“I’m so bored! My internet has been down for five minutes and my friends have other things to do right now!” Thus spake the 21^st Century person.

 

Boredom is seen to be a thing of great evil. If it was not for boredom, and the fear of, (plus insecurity) bars would be overflowing with drink as they would be empty. The old adage ‘a bored person is a boring person’ is trotted out ad absurdum until the adage itself has become boring (BORRREIIINGGGGG) yet there seems to be a validity to the cliché.

 

If one considers the history of literature, science and so forth, one will see that boredom has played an underrated role. A bored single mother on benefits sat in a café each day and wrote a serious of books about the greatest murderer of all time who could not kill a baby, only leaving a lightning mark on his forehead whilst, before her, Joseph Lister looked at his dirty sink and thought ‘I’m not washing up, it’s boring’ and thus infections had their own Harry Potter.

 

Fifty years ago the great scientific minds had a dream- walk on the moon. $200 billion (taking into consideration inflation) and countless working lives and hours were spent and on the 20^th of July 1969 the dream was realised and an incoherent Neil Armstrong was mocked as people on earth (how great it feels to say that- he was talking to people on earth from off shore (which I take to mean not in America (substitute any country one is resident of))) who missed out a crucial ‘a’ due to the bad quality of the transmission leading to conversations like this:

 

Moron: Hey Armstrong, you can’t like totally speak American, man!

 

Armstrong: Hey buddy, when you’ve been on the moon get back to me…

 

 

But since then public science has become about combating boredom. Zuckerburg thought ‘hey, wouldn’t it be great if everyone knew everyone’s private lives and can see how fun it is!’ whilst others thought ‘hey wouldn’t it be great if people could browse other people’s lives from the comfort of the palm of their hand?’ and- when the devices became too small to see the inane grins and super fun!- ‘hey wouldn’t it be great to have a device the size of an A4 book so people can actually see the pictures!’

 

The world is now interconnected, privacy, (remember that?) for the best part a thing of the past, however there are still people out there who have the ability to get bored. Without devices, empty social lives and all of the other filler, great Television shows, plays, discoveries etc (my mind is still blown from gravitational waves) are still happening.

 

It was once said that publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a feather into a canyon and waiting to hear an echo and this seems to be true (maybe it always has been) yet the actual process of the writing is what it should be about. Yes there are some who do the work for the rewards but to others the work is reward in itself. Why? Why because it gives them purpose and drive, it is why they get up in the morning it is because one day they woke up and said ‘I’m bored so I am going to do something that is important to me’ and without these people we would not have the world in which we live, we would not have recorded music, social media, books, maybe not even written language so all one can say is hurrah for boredom!

 

And if this blog entry has made you bored then go and write a better one! It is your life and there is no excuse to be bored!