Left Home Without Headphones
The Pain of Boredom
Today, I left home without my headphones with a couple of hours long journey ahead of me.
Okay, you may pick your jaws up from the floor, it’s not that big of a deal. I got new ones on my way.
But you know, when you are outside and you search your bag frantically for that audio spaghetti strand that makes your commute a little more bearable? And when they are nowhere to be found, you can only stare blankly into space with the realisation of how agonising it’s going to be.
I am lucky I was in a tech shop and bought myself a pair. Partly also because I needed to change anyway — my old earphones are coming off and fraying.
This got me thinking about how we have now been so afraid to stare boredom right in the face.
Honestly, I dare you to try it. Sit on a 1 hour train commute and just sit there until your destination. Don’t plug your ears in, don’t read, don’t whip out your phone.
Just sit there.
It sounds torturous doesn’t it? That’s how grueling boredom is. It reminds me of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace, it has so many quotable paragraphs on boredom. Here is my favourite:
Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient, low-level way, and which most of us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention.
Walkman, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everyone knows it’s about something else, way down.” — The Pale King, David Foster Wallace
We are turning away from something within us whenever we are escaping boredom, without ourselves realizing that we are unconsciously evading that something. It could be some worry about the future; a loss of someone close to you; a problem you are putting off that needs to be solved right now.
To sit with boredom means to confront your inner feelings, to let the voice in your head talk and ponder as you look around the cabin, at those heads that are looking down, blue light reflecting off their faces as they stare — some attentively, most disinterested — at their screens.
Some of them close their eyes as they listen to music, body swaying as the vehicle brakes and accelerates. They seem relaxed, then you spot a few that were frowning, as if there was a war going on behind the lids.
Everyone has their demons to fight, some more than others, some stronger than others. But leaving them there to gnaw at your soul is not going to help you get over anything.
You know how when we were kids, an hour of commute meant an hour to play with your imagination? You can look around and question everything, you can pretend there is a superhero outside the window running and dodging obstacles while matching the pace of the vehicle. You can think about anything you want.
But just because our thoughts became more and more scary as we grow up, doesn’t mean we stop confronting them.
Boredom isn’t the enemy, he only guides you to your enemy, the source of your distress.
Boredom is trying to help you face the demolisher of your psyche, so that you will not get chipped away slowly inside.
Don’t fear boredom. Unplug, my friends, and face it.