What is boredom? When the TV is off, the phone isn’t ringing, the computer is shut down… it’s that time in between. It’s the time when your mind doesn’t have something to digest.
I love those moments.
Perhaps many of us go through our days without ever quieting our minds. We go from one thing to the next, constantly processing, thinking, talking, listening, etc. One of my professors once referred to that as “monkey-mind.”
I’m sure you’ve seen people that choose to live like this. It’s the perpetual state of scatter brain. It’s a choice; not one that is better or worse, just a path that isn’t for me.
Having nothing to do can be a beautiful, powerful experience. It gives your mind rest and calm – and it’s a calm that you’ll carry around for the rest of the day – bringing into the lives of those around you. It reminds me of a Eckhart Tolle passage that I once read from Stillness Speaks:
The mind exists in a state of “not enough” and so is always greedy for more. When you are identified with mind, you get bored and restless very easily. Boredom means the mind is hungry for more stimulus, more food for thought, and its hunger is not being satisfied.
When you feel bored, you can satisfy the mind’s hunger by picking up a magazine, making a phone call, switching on the TV, surfing the web, going shopping, or — and this is not uncommon — transferring the mental sense of lack and its need for more to the body and satisfy it briefly by ingesting more food.
Or you can stay bored and restless and observe what it feels like to be bored and restless. As you bring awareness to the feeling, there is suddenly some space and stillness around it, as it were. A little at first, but as the sense of inner space grows, the feeling of boredom will begin to diminish in intensity and significance. So even boredom can teach you who you are and who you are not.
I plan on being bored tonight. Sarah and Arty just left a few moments ago for the United States. It’s my last night in Argentina. I can’t think of a better way to spend it.
Here’s to being bored… perhaps one of the least boring things you can be.
October 27, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Have a good trip back…I have read all of your blogs and listen to all of the youtubes from Argentina. Hope this was time in Argentina has been profitable for you…I don’t think it’s your kind of place…Not sure it’s mine but I am here, whether that’s good or bad. I will probably not follow you every day after you leave but I’ll check in from to time. The advice column idea is a good one, by the way.
October 27, 2007 at 8:00 pm
i feel a special talkyblog comin, the last from Buenos Aires cant wait lol maybe like a special home comin 1, but time will tell, hey i might b wrong lol
Tim, 18, Sydney
October 28, 2007 at 1:16 am
You call it “bored” Dave, I call it “peace” … that wonderful moment when stillness happens, when all Love blossoms, when there is nothing “to do” – except be. Beautiful!
Have a great trip! If you go into a quiet space on the journey, be watchful for the “naughty” thoughts I will send to you – just for the pure fun of it! Hahaha!!
Bodhi
October 28, 2007 at 4:47 am
yeah agree with bodhi.. peace rather than bored.. u seems to be a rather emotional guy.. i feel..
peace out.. Rayki Algiz
October 28, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Well said, I have always liked being bored, now I have some insight as to why. welcome back to the US
October 28, 2007 at 2:31 pm
dave just wanted to wish you a safe trip back home.
laters
max
October 28, 2007 at 3:17 pm
This is an overall comment on your blog:
i accidentally ran into your video on youtube.
you sure seem to be thinking a lot…
I guess you have that much time on your hands. bravo for that!
also, you do make some interesting points but how much of that can or rather should one actually practice? do you think your stress-free approach could be good for all?
it sounds logical, but after thinking about it, to me it looks like you’re talking about being detached and the benefits of that… that can’t be good! it might be good for you, but is it good for the people around you?
after seeing your video posts my general opinion was that you had one-too-many yoga classes or are one of those, as the old greeks called them, sofists.. just blah blah but nothing actual behind it… at best l’art pour l’art (if it can be called art at all).
anyway, you obviously see detachedness as something that suits you well, and your comments such as the one on not “attaching labels” and creating expectations, your job and other facts about you (unless you are faking it) seem to fit in to that picture you created on-line.
you like keeping distance don’t you? and this whole blog thing, in a weird way, is just you expressing and rationalizing it – me thinks
am i right and how much?