If you're bored then you're boring, pt.3
December 2nd 2008 06:03
The last two blogs I wrote on this topic were a bit self-helpish along the lines of "how do you know if you're boring or just bored?" I'm quite sure now that if anyone thinks they are boring, they are just projecting their own boredom onto other people. So in the question of which comes first: boredom or boringness, the answer is boredom.
I've come to realise recently how much of a part boredom has played in my life. For example, the main preoccupation in my life is guitarring, and I distinctly remember wanting to learn guitar in year 8 so that I would have something to do on boring afternoons after school. I went to uni because I was bored of work, quit uni because I got bored of that, then recently went back after I was bored of work again. I started going to the gym because I was bored of sitting at home at night, after I got bored of going out almost every night. Most new movies and music bore me - they are so formulaic and predictable, so much like everything that has come before them. A lot of people bore me.
Maybe guitarring is not the main preoccupation of my life like I thought - maybe it is boredom. An uncle of mine had a solution to this many years ago when I was a kid - he told me this: "don't you know what the secret to getting over boredom is? Do something else!" Another person said, "I rarely get bored, I just always find myself something to be busy with." For me, though, it is rarely enough to just be busy with something. I am almost always busy at work stacking shelves, but I find this boring as all fuck. I imagine this is because even though my body is busy, my mind is not. Perhaps the activity I'm least bored doing is playing computer games. Even if its just some shit little game like Lion King on Mega Drive which I was playing the other day, I'm usually pretty locked into it. Now I hardly play computer games at all anymore because despite feeling good while playing them, I invariably feel like crap after. Lethargic and dull. Kind of the opposite of going to the gym, where I'm struggling and toiling whilst I'm doing it, but have a spring in my step after I'm finished.
I wish I had the quote, but in my second favourite book of all time, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, he mentions something about the profoundness of boredom. That for a Zen student, it carries a lot of importance. The implication was something like, if you can understand or get in touch with your boredom, you are close to truth or enlightenment. I don't know about this though - I hate boredom, I really do. I like being interested in something. Even more, I like being enthralled in something. Lost in the passion, lost in the moment. That is happiness.
This is closely related to wrote in my blog Effort and the Buddha about how effort can help us get into "the zone". Effort helps us to engage in something, thereby reducing the boredom that comes from being an observer, and outsider. But that doesn't really help when you're watching a movie you don't like or sitting with a bunch of people you find boring. In cases like that I think you just have to go with the flow. You can't choose what you like and what you don't like, you just go with whatever you're attracted to; to hell with the rest. None of this "I should be liking this thing because it's well-rated" kind of stuff (and people do sell ideas like that all the time, especially marketers and critics). I think that weak sort of thinking is why Nietzsche disliked morality - it is not true to one's own perspective, rather neutralised through trying to blend in with that of others.
Maybe this quote sums it up:
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the temple and take alms of those who work with joy - taken from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.
Effort might help, but you can't force joy. You can only be its servant.
I've come to realise recently how much of a part boredom has played in my life. For example, the main preoccupation in my life is guitarring, and I distinctly remember wanting to learn guitar in year 8 so that I would have something to do on boring afternoons after school. I went to uni because I was bored of work, quit uni because I got bored of that, then recently went back after I was bored of work again. I started going to the gym because I was bored of sitting at home at night, after I got bored of going out almost every night. Most new movies and music bore me - they are so formulaic and predictable, so much like everything that has come before them. A lot of people bore me.
Maybe guitarring is not the main preoccupation of my life like I thought - maybe it is boredom. An uncle of mine had a solution to this many years ago when I was a kid - he told me this: "don't you know what the secret to getting over boredom is? Do something else!" Another person said, "I rarely get bored, I just always find myself something to be busy with." For me, though, it is rarely enough to just be busy with something. I am almost always busy at work stacking shelves, but I find this boring as all fuck. I imagine this is because even though my body is busy, my mind is not. Perhaps the activity I'm least bored doing is playing computer games. Even if its just some shit little game like Lion King on Mega Drive which I was playing the other day, I'm usually pretty locked into it. Now I hardly play computer games at all anymore because despite feeling good while playing them, I invariably feel like crap after. Lethargic and dull. Kind of the opposite of going to the gym, where I'm struggling and toiling whilst I'm doing it, but have a spring in my step after I'm finished.
I wish I had the quote, but in my second favourite book of all time, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, he mentions something about the profoundness of boredom. That for a Zen student, it carries a lot of importance. The implication was something like, if you can understand or get in touch with your boredom, you are close to truth or enlightenment. I don't know about this though - I hate boredom, I really do. I like being interested in something. Even more, I like being enthralled in something. Lost in the passion, lost in the moment. That is happiness.
This is closely related to wrote in my blog Effort and the Buddha about how effort can help us get into "the zone". Effort helps us to engage in something, thereby reducing the boredom that comes from being an observer, and outsider. But that doesn't really help when you're watching a movie you don't like or sitting with a bunch of people you find boring. In cases like that I think you just have to go with the flow. You can't choose what you like and what you don't like, you just go with whatever you're attracted to; to hell with the rest. None of this "I should be liking this thing because it's well-rated" kind of stuff (and people do sell ideas like that all the time, especially marketers and critics). I think that weak sort of thinking is why Nietzsche disliked morality - it is not true to one's own perspective, rather neutralised through trying to blend in with that of others.
Maybe this quote sums it up:
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the temple and take alms of those who work with joy - taken from "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran.
Effort might help, but you can't force joy. You can only be its servant.
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