(I know introversion and extroversion are more complex, more nuanced than that, but this is a blog, not a dissertation.)
When I was a kid and complained about being bored, Mom would respond with little lectures about making my own fun, reminding me (yet again) that only boring people get bored.
Ah. Yes. Perhaps the reason we avoid boredom is to avoid the ego-damaging realization we aren’t as interesting, entertaining, compelling, cool as we like to imagine, that we’re actually (oh god, no) boring.
Why do we look to external sources for relief from boredom? Because we don’t have the cure within us? Because we just react to prefabricated stimuli rather than creating our own? Because most of us are consumers rather than creators? Because consuming is easy and creating isn’t?
Creating anything, whether it’s any good or not, puts us in a state of focus. All that other stuff out there—time, for example—ceases to exist. It’s just us and the thing we’re doing. It’s us inside our self, projecting our self into the world, enlarging our world. It’s giving rather than taking.
Here are Nathaniel Drew’s thoughts on boredom.
This is our time. We're built for this shit!
ReplyDeleteThe meek shall inherit the earth, right?
DeleteBoredom to me sounds like someone with a dead imagination.
ReplyDeleteAtta boy Barney.
DeleteI don't understand how anyone who can read is ever bored.
ReplyDeleteIn my youth I was told repetitively, GROW UP, I found the statement repulsive intuitively. I still do.
ReplyDeleteBe Quiet. That would be a rude remark did I not know that you have read the book. (It’s on your reading list.) Keep on keepin on.
ReplyDeleteWell now. 'Scuze me whilst I clamber atop my soapbox he'ar; I ain't as spry as I oncet wuz, dontchyaknow, but...
ReplyDeleteI find it astounding when people talk the way Drew does. He leaps, much the way Rush Limbaugh, Jesse Helms and their ilk do, from the Industrial Revolution to the ideas of Flow and play, to Isaac Newton and ends by reiterating how he TOO struggles with getting vs paying attention.
I listened to a portion of Levitt's TED Talk that Drew cites as better conveying what he's saying.
See: https://www.ted.com/talks/joseph_gordon_levitt_how_craving_attention_makes_you_less_creative?language=en
Levitt does a great job of talking out of both sides of his mouth. Levitt, whose career revolves around getting attention, tells how he has a Pavlovian response to the sequence of words that precede filming. In the next sentence he then trivializes this feeling by saying he finds greater satisfaction in paying attention. Interestingly, he doesn't distinguish between paying attention to someONE or someTHING.
It was Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce who went before Congress and said (and I paraphrase), "We spend about 20% (interestingly, he'd grasped how White men think in percentages and recognized the importance of lowering himself to their level) of our time getting food. This leaves us lots of time to spend with our wives (note plural), children, in conversation with friends, hunting and doing other things we enjoy. If we adopt your way of life we'll spend all out time stuck in one place hoeing and weeding. No thanks."
I've been gifted since early childhood with a strong libido. I can still see in my mind's eye the girl in kindergarten whose gentle smile and twinkling eyes imbued a desire to sit next to her; it was a mutually-shared attention.
When we left Germany I wasn't quite yet aged ten, but was sharing "attentions" with four (or more) girls. I also was one of the better marbles player, good at mumble-dee-peg, could catch a hard-thrown fast ball, would sometimes go with several other children to catch mice and shrews under bales of hay (we caught them for fun and then released them) but, as far as I know, I was the only "outsider" welcomed into the Gypsy camp at the edge of town. I often went to nearby sand quarries, by myself, where I caught and released lizards and explored the area. But most of the time my activities included someone else...and, and I think this is an essential difference, it involved doing something outside.
Nowadays, the expanses of pavement don't have holes with newborn bunnies inside. The creeks that once held minnows or even fish are now dried up. Tortoises, horned toads, snakes, starlings to shoot with bb guns, have all disappeared into the flickering screens of tv and phones.
Sex, although somewhat more appreciated, still seems to be a relatively rudimentary activity that's dispatched with almost the same attitude one eats a hamburger. (Think "lowering" one's self to be able to talk to a White man...the least common denominator.)
It's a different world. And I think Chief Joseph would agree it's disingenuous to suggest that boredom is due to lack of paying or getting attention.
That's MY thesis...and I'm sticking to it.