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boredom
November 2009 
Love song to boredom
Posted on Oct 24th, 2009
by 
Centria
Centria
What do you do when you're bored? asks Siona on the daily questions.
Oh this is a juicy question! It's the juiciest question of the week.
So many people wrote: I never get bored. There's too much to do! There is this interest and that interest and another interest and this activity and that activity and another activity. Only boring people get bored.
I must have been the most boring person in the Universe. So boring that the geese and the deer and the mice wouldn't even provide entertainment. So boring, so boring.
It all started when we moved to the middle of the woods when we were barely out of our tender youth. And Barry always had a million things to do like building houses, cutting down trees for firewood, fixing cars.
And I...didn't...have...anything...to..do.
Endless boredom. Endless years spent thinking how to entertain myself. Why did other people have 6,000 interests and projects and crafts they liked to do? And I...didn't...have...anything...to...do.
The restlessness was excruciating. Painful! Intense suffering! Sometimes I felt like I was going crazy with restlessness and boredom. (Then the kids came along and a couple part-time jobs and the pain of it abated somewhat, only showing up with PMS or at odd moments.)
But here is the scoop: Boredom and restlessness have been the greatest gifts of my life. There you have it.
This blog is really a Love Song to Boredom. Because of boredom, I became deeply acquainted with emptiness. In a way that would have been impossible while surrounded with people and projects and things. Boredom led into the labyrinth of the emptiness. It led so deep into the self that I became personally acquainted with Nothing.
And that Nothing has become Everything.
So, if boredom decides to come visiting you, don't push her away. Invite her in, tell her stories, entertain her. But if she gets bored with you: stop. Just sit with her emptiness. Be bored. Be deeper than bored. You might fall in love with her too.
Oh this is a juicy question! It's the juiciest question of the week.
So many people wrote: I never get bored. There's too much to do! There is this interest and that interest and another interest and this activity and that activity and another activity. Only boring people get bored.
I must have been the most boring person in the Universe. So boring that the geese and the deer and the mice wouldn't even provide entertainment. So boring, so boring.
It all started when we moved to the middle of the woods when we were barely out of our tender youth. And Barry always had a million things to do like building houses, cutting down trees for firewood, fixing cars.
And I...didn't...have...anything...to..do.
Endless boredom. Endless years spent thinking how to entertain myself. Why did other people have 6,000 interests and projects and crafts they liked to do? And I...didn't...have...anything...to...do.
The restlessness was excruciating. Painful! Intense suffering! Sometimes I felt like I was going crazy with restlessness and boredom. (Then the kids came along and a couple part-time jobs and the pain of it abated somewhat, only showing up with PMS or at odd moments.)
But here is the scoop: Boredom and restlessness have been the greatest gifts of my life. There you have it.
This blog is really a Love Song to Boredom. Because of boredom, I became deeply acquainted with emptiness. In a way that would have been impossible while surrounded with people and projects and things. Boredom led into the labyrinth of the emptiness. It led so deep into the self that I became personally acquainted with Nothing.
And that Nothing has become Everything.
So, if boredom decides to come visiting you, don't push her away. Invite her in, tell her stories, entertain her. But if she gets bored with you: stop. Just sit with her emptiness. Be bored. Be deeper than bored. You might fall in love with her too.
Access: Public
How freaking wonderful is this? I love you Kathy for this, for your honesty, your ability to capture in words what truly can be movement of evolution from egoic boredom to ecstatic spiritual awareness… To embrace the darkness, to become one with the emptiness, the nothingness… a frightening place if you are bored but a wondrous beautiful experience if on purpose…
I have been in the bored boring place for awhile, I think I just shifted!
Bless you for honoring who you are!
I am Love, Jeff
Freaking wonderful? Really? I was just kinda trying to tell the truth. :)
P.S. sometimes I still get a little freaked out w boredom, kind of we have a lover's spat, but we still love each other!
Glad for your shift! Let's keep helping each other shift over and over again…
I'll second what Jeff said and build on it a little bit. Abso-friggin'-lutely wonderful observation, Kathy. May I call you “my Kathy”? You are mine now because I claim you for my sister, my kindred, my very own soul out there.
The Gaia question about boredom made me wonder out lout whether anyone had actually ever truly been bored to death… Cuz, you know, I think I have. I got so bored with my own repetitive thoughts, the predictable-ness of my habitual reactions, the conditioned routines of the people all around, that there was nowhere else to turn, finally, than into the depths of my innermost being, and this appeared to me as an abyss…
Over and over again, the abyss of absolute ennui, world-weariness and the recognition of ultimate futility would open up in front of my inner eyes. So, finally one day, I started to jump into it. That's when I became an abyss-jumper, more reckless than the bungee-jumping, airplane parachuting guys who do this for sport.
Now when I see a psychological abyss opening up before me, I remember the joy of the last plunge into black, fathomless nothingness, and sometimes I feel a little nudge from Death, who rides behind my left shoulder, telling me to go ahead, jump! …prove once again that I Am this deathless, indestructible, pure, pure energy, with everything to lose and nothing to gain, cuz it is All mine already.
You always stretch us beyond our little boundaries, Kathy. So grateful, I am. And Mascha, thank you for sharing your story, too.
We are always offered opportunities to expand, some via fullness, some via emptiness. Bungee-jumping. What a great image!
Love, OM Bastet
Mascha, another soul who has almost been bored to death? I mean, who HAS been bored to death? Indeed, we must be sisters. Two years ago, three years ago, I decided to sit in boredom for a month, finally meeting emptiness. Oh what a month! Like you it was a plunge into the black fathomless nothingness. Perhaps some of us need that world-weariness to propel us. Dunno… We work with what we're given perhaps. I suppose people can come to the same place through lots of interests & doings. What a strange lot we are… (loved your comment so much last night!)
OM, I always love your comments too. It's funny. I told Barry about writing this blog and asked him, “Do I do this stretching beyond boundaries w people in physical reality?” and he said, “No, not so much, you usually fit in well.” (????) Except when I'm with people who WANT to strech their boundaries. Then they can have a glimpse of this upside-down-backwards-type-thinking.
Your sentence about being offered fullness and emptiness opportunities opens the door really wide. That is so cool. Thank you so much.
Oh this was so wonderful and helpful!!! This is right up there on my favorite posts from Kath!!!
So Very, Very, Helpful, Lightning and Enlightening!!!
Deep Bow of Gratitude!
z
Kathy, have I told you lately that I love you, because I do! This is a wonderful blog…thank you.
Indeed! One of the things I've learned is to be okay to be alone with myself, when there is nothing to entertain or distract me, to simply - be -!
Zennie, oh I'm so glad you liked it! We'll sing odes and write poems to boredom from now on! smiling…
Helen, OH the old heart just about stopped it was so soft with your words of love! thank YOU and I love you, too.
Hi confabulations (what a cool name)…there you've said it exactly. To simply be. So very simple. So glad you stopped by and commented.
I like this post and I am also glad you wrote it as you told so very well. I glanced at some answers to this today and even thought about it. We even had some discussion on the subject at home.
The similarities Kathy are the living in the “nowhere” or the woods as you say and what followed after moving here.
I have written on occasion around here that I now consider boredom a privilege. Coming from our once upon a time frantic life style and to here was a shock to the system. Like you, I had to embrace boredom and am fascinated with my findings. I find creativity in boredom, spontaneity, quietness, wonders and this one day my son and I discovered it took 1683 buttons to draw his outline on the kitchen floor. I think I really found myself in it all the same.
Boredom gets a bad rap but I agree with you…there is a wealth of goodies in it to discover if one allows it in.
I see your on to new adventures with writting…best to you with it.
(One day out of boredom…I too wrote a book!)
See what I mean!
Denim, of all the people on Gaia (no, I can think of a couple more) I think you can understand what it is like to live in the woods, away from so many people. The feelings you get when you realize you can't be entertained by society. Although, if you have a TV and computer and neighbors and a nearby town you can try your hardest to run away from the emptiness. Man, I spent so many years running as fast as these legs would go. And crying a lot.
Eventually you either have to surrender to boredom and open your restless eyes and look around. And amazing what we might find. A project with 1863 buttons! The idea to write a book (yep, I wrote one too a few years ago…a “spiritual autobiography”. It's sitting gathering dust on the shelf.
This is not an easy path, but it's a worthwhile path, wouldn't you say? You actually lived the frantic lifestyle for awhile (we came here directly from college) so you have truly experienced both worlds. And I think you are even farther into the “nowhere” than we are.
Smiling thinking of you today, Denim. Thank you for sharing your experiences with the goodies Boredom shares, eventually.
Worthwhile indeed my friend!
(I just want to also note that boredom has also got me a heap of trouble all the same!)
Oh yeah. Yep. Know that one. About boredom getting us in a heap of trouble. Let's not talk about that. LOL!!!
Boredom and being boring oneself is the greatest fear of the adventurous thrill-seeker. At least that certainly holds true for me and other thrill-seekers I've been talking to.
Isn't that the truth. Just reading your comment was a thrill. :)