You have a meeting at five in the afternoon with Professor Hoppstein. Don’t forget you need to call Helene. English homework is due tomorrow, have you thought of an idea for the essay? Crap, make sure you stop to put gas in your car before starting for school. Oh, should I wear this today? No, I may see Jennifer, I should dress to impress. Steve is waiting for an email, I should draft it up during lunch. Wait, but I have an appointment with Daniel during lunch! Did I finish the application he sent me?
Pause.
We think too fast. Whether it may be in an academic, social, or professional environment, stressful periods of our lives marked by due dates and appointments always seem to fire the gun for mental sprints. We question what we must do. We plan. We drive. We move. We do work. But we never pause.
And when we do, we’re considered bored. We are placed on a mental peddle-stool where we have nothing to do or plan. Nothing to amuse or entertain us. Nothing to keep us busy. So we sit in agony, searching for a savior of activities to lift us from this numbing stupor, but we never think to ourselves it may be a time to simply perceive life itself. To look around and enjoy the smaller things that we would otherwise ignore. The patch of grass that seems to be taller than the rest. The facial expressions of those on their phones. The sound the birds make. For lack of better words, the aroma of the roses.
More so, we overlook the activity of reflection itself. We try to think of things to do, but never think of the process of thought itself. We never try to understand ourselves, and the way we react to things. Rather than thinking about our activities in the past in order to analyze ourselves and in return change us for the better, we instead look to our phones and plan for the future with no insight on ourselves. We act believing our behavior is normal and perfect, we think with no reservation for doubt, and in turn rush into doing things—accelerating our mental process only for the worse.
If anything, boredom serves as a flat-stone to sharpen our sensitivity of interest. Boredom occurs when we are not entertaining our minds with something that we deem interesting, but after being bored for prolonged periods, we start to value things so much to the point where even looking at a wall can be the most interesting venture. Boredom brings us down to earth and helps us appreciate the things that in comparison to Hollywood explosions and video games, we would deem, mundane. Writing this essay may seem boring to some, but once we understand the value in ordinary things, we begin to value life itself more.
So next time you pick up your phone because you have nothing else to do, restrain yourself, and instead sit quietly, think, and imagine. It may be more enlightening than you think.
