Is the Fear of Boredom Driving Your Life?
By Goodpal, 9th Jul 2011 | Follow this author
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Posted in WikinutHealthMind & SpiritMental Health
Boredom is lack of stimulation. It is characterized by slow reactions, lack of productivity, wandering attention, and lessened emotional response. Boredom is almost always the creation of the person who is bored. Modern sedentary lifestyle has reduced boredom to the status of a devil that must be avoided; however, it is an opportunity for growth.
- Obsession to Always Keep Busy
- Is the Lifestyle Killing You?
- The Emptiness doesn’t Go Away
- Mental Discipline is the Key
- Final Words
Obsession to Always Keep Busy
The 21st century life is really cozy and full of physical comforts. There are more conveniences and more ways to entertain and connect to people than ever before. Internet and communication technology has provided facilities to fill every slot of free time day or night. So everyone is simply busy all the time. The addiction to social media sites, emails, cell phones, ipods is so absorbing that even a few seconds without them seems killing – this empty space is called boredom these days. Activities such as spending time in nature, playing outdoor games, visiting museum or zoo, sharing and enjoying with family and friends, playing with children, reading stories for them before bedtime are all becoming rarer.
One thing is a amply clear: the obsession to fill every fraction of time with one trivia or another is also making the fear of boredom bigger. For many, staying away from “being busy” even for few minutes is an impossible task.
Let us see what the consequence of this ever-busy lifestyle is.
Is the Lifestyle Killing You?
The boredom we face today is not the “how to keep busy” type. On the contrary, the plethora of choices to remain occupied often confuses and paralyzes us. The boredom that afflicts us today is “nothing excites me anymore” type or “everything is too dull” type. If you want me to be honest, it is a direct result of living with too many quick-fixes and trivial excitements. It is literally like a dose of caffeine that gives a spike of stimulus and then we plunge back into gloom. So, we are always ready and looking for some stimulus to “feel better”.
As a result, we go shopping, eat out at different places, or buy a newest cell phone model just to be rewarded with an immediate “high”. Every time we do such things our brain releases a dose of “feel good” chemicals and reinforces the habit of looking for “quick highs”. Without our knowing we are already in an “excitement followed by gloom” trap.
The Emptiness doesn’t Go Away
Naturally, the “highs” don't last long: the fun of shopping lasts only as long as we spend money, the newness of the cell phone fades within days, and the expensive exotic meal is digested within hours and finds its way to the place where everything we eat eventually ends up. Hence, as the “high” evaporates we crash back to our base-level and are again face to face with the emptiness we have been trying to avoid as boredom.
This lack of excitement is a fearful situation, more by way of training than as a reality. The modern lifestyle has successfully fooled us into equating the temporarily induced “high” as happiness. It is plain nonsense. Sorry, I don’t mean to disparage how someone lives but one needs to realize that the “high” is not happiness. Society has simply given us a wrong dictionary. The funniest part is that we accept it as a normal way of living because that’s what everyone else appears to be doing.
As time goes by the situation gets worse; now bigger stimulus is needed to get bigger “high”. As the craving for excitement gets larger the restless too gets magnified. Now your wife for five years suddenly appears too unappealing – you need the fun and scandal of other women to cure the so-called boredom. Don’t be surprised if you soon end up entangled in a mess and ruin your marriage.
What is difficult to realize chasing trivial excitements is that it turns the mind into an undisciplined bully. It soon starts demanding more and more excitement and gets depressed whenever the dose of excitement is delayed or missing. Don’t be surprised if doctors start attaching fanciful alphabets to this “mental disease”. Whether they can cure this “illness” is not the issue but you will sure be more confused than before and of course more miserable too.
Mental Discipline is the Key
Think carefully: Boredom is a reminder that your mind wants excitement because you have trained it that way by your undisciplined lifestyle.
Next food for thought: Who told you that you must be excited all the time to happy?
It is another side effect of the high tech lifestyle that we start equating the pleasure of thrills and amusements with happiness, which actually has nothing to do with how high or low you feel or how often your moods change.
Happiness has more to do with the way of being – it a mental state of contentment and satisfaction with what you have; not the other way around. When you are bored you are not satisfied with what you have. You are restless and crave for something – basically you crave for a change. You have to realize that this craving is the problem.
You can handle this craving by injecting elements of discipline in your life and stop doing things out of impulse and craving (and calling it boredom). Prepare yourself mentally to face the restlessness or emptiness that you wrongly call boredom. Create situations to allow you to be “bored” for few minutes to start with, and then increase this time progressively.
Final Words
In the 17th century, Blaise Pascal wrote, "All of men's troubles stem from his inability to sit quietly alone in a room." This may be somewhat an overstatement but he had a point. When we are alone with ourselves we get a chance to explore our inner world and take care of its wear and tear.
Prune your list of thing-to-do and restrict it to only those activities that are really important and add value to your life. Use the spare time to train to be relaxed and happy – don’t fill this time with trivialities of shuffling TV channels, reading emails, or exchanging useless information on social media sites.
Doing things just to keep busy is a bad habit. This is a lesson you need to write with stone on your mind. Besides, it is also bad time management.
Finally, train to be grateful for the positive gifts you have – your friends, family, health, wealth, and the potentials of life. The qualities of gratitude, contentment, and goodwill and compassion for others lift you up. Time spent in developing them is the best use of time.
If you liked this page, you may also be interested in reading Afraid of Boredom? Why?
Comments
9th Jul 2011 (#)
Wonderful article here, giving us all plenty to think about. I agree with you whole heartedly.
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10th Jul 2011 (#)
You know, I have no fear of boredom, I actually welcome it. A very nice page, I just adore the pictures. They all put a big smile on my face, love it! Well written my friend. Congrats on the star page, it is well deserved. As always, thank you for sharing.:)
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11th Jul 2011 (#)
I think this is really an interesting topic for me and the pictures really works
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