Friday, February 19, 2010

In praise of boredom ... yes, "praise"

Colin Bisset writes in Philosophy Now (ht):
my idea of boredom has little to do with wealthy surroundings. It’s about a certain mindset. Perfect boredom is the enjoyment of the moment of stasis that comes between slowing down and speeding up – like sitting at a traffic light for a particularly long time. It’s at the cusp of action, because however enjoyable it may be, boredom is really not a long-term aspiration. It’s for an afternoon before a sociable evening. It marks that point in a holiday when you’ve shrugged off all the concerns of work and home, explored the hotel and got used to the swimming pool, and everything has become totally familiar. ‘I’m bored’ just pops into your mind one morning as you’re laying your towel over the sunlounger before breakfast, and then you think ‘How lovely.’ It’s about the stillness and familiarity of that precise moment before the inevitable anxiety about packing up and heading back to God-knows-what.
But, it is quite difficult to be bored as we get older.  Like Bisset mentions, I too felt bored when I was a kid.  Now, boredom is a luxury that not only can I not afford, but I feel guilty if I feel bored.  The guilt coming from a nagging feeling that I ought to be doing something ...
But then this might also be the reason why we feel time flies by as we get older .... because, we do not allow boredom into our lives.

NPR  had a segment on why life seems to speed up as we age .... As the NPR page says, read it before it is too late :)
If you don't want to read/listen to that, you can always watch this clip of As Time Goes By .... from one of my all-time favorite movies, Casablanca, with one of my all-time favorite actors, Ingrid Bergman :)

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