In praise of boredom

It should be embraced, rather than feared

It may seem perverse to suggest that the sense that we’ve all had at some point in our lives of being bored is not a feeling we should shove away as an indication of lacking lustre in our lives. The French word, ennuyé gives a better sense of the feeling (emotion?), suggesting one is troubled by ennui, that is, by being in the state of boredom. Ennui, itself, somehow offers a more grounded definition – weariness within existence, not just a precocious idling one’s time away.

Remember those times as a child when, unguardedly saying to a parent or adult ‘I’m bored’, and being told in no uncertain terms to ‘go and do something, then’. And, we generally did: outdoors, in the woods, along the banks of streams or being chased by irate farmers. But, as an adult, the very thought of having nothing to do or, rather, believing one’s life is slipping through the widening cracks of fickle time, is too often perceived as plain scary. You begin to think you are wasting your life, that time waits for no one or that, as we are endlessly told, time is money so you are losing precious income, cash being substituted for thought as the ultimate arbiter of our time.

Boredom is a crucial part of our existence. It is not so much a waste of time as an opportunity to explore why we might be in that state and to celebrate the sense of lack of (immediate) purpose. There are lessons to be learned, opportunities to be grasped, in those moments, maybe stretching for days on end, when nothing appears to be happening. It is, when you come to think about it, more than passingly strange than we take holidays to get away from daily living: in one sense, actively to seek boredom. I know, I know, your holiday is not like that. Perhaps it should be, just a little, unless you happen to be among those for whom lazing on a sunbed on a beach or by a pool in the sun is the whole point. Bear with me – try not to be bored – as I divert our path onto a subject which, it turns out, is intimately connected to my theme.

Recently, came a study of young adults which indicated that more than half wished the internet had never been invented. Isobel Brooks, a young writer, contemplating this research, says: ‘A video went viral on X a few months ago that I can’t stop watching. It’s 2003: the band that later becomes MGMT are performing their song Kids to their peers, years before they become a pop sensation, in a dusty quad at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. Social media doesn’t exist yet.

‘There is something about the way people look and behave and inhabit the space that tugs at my heartstrings and fills me with nostalgia. No one is dressed that well; the camera zooms unsteadily to capture the crowd’s awkwardness, slumped shoulders and arrhythmic bopping. Beyond the footage we’re watching, no one seems to be filming [that is, each other or themselves].

‘I was only four when the video was made, so why does watching it make me feel as if I’ve lost a whole world? A recent survey suggests I’m not alone – that almost half of young people would prefer a world without the internet. If anything, I expected a higher percentage. This doesn’t mean my generation really would like to reverse everything that’s happened in the last few decades, but there’s clearly something we feel we’re missing out on that older people have had, and we attribute it to the internet – or at least to its current form, dominated as it is by social media.

‘What exactly do we think we’re missing? Personally, I assume that before the social internet people behaved in more authentic and idiosyncratic ways [my emphasis]. Social media has sped up trend cycles, resulting in an eerie uniformity across styles and personalities: we buy the same products, wear the same clothes, act in the same way, reference the same memes – even quirkiness itself or more “unique” behaviour can be ascribed to trends.

‘I also imagine that if we weren’t on display all the time, our friendships and interactions could be less commodified. Now, spending time with friends is material to be documented and then demonstrated to a faceless audience.

‘I’m sure these are rose-tinted assumptions, and I’m conscious too of the things I take for granted about an age of connectivity. Having to trawl through a few measly books and encyclopaedias to find anything useful, or growing up in a remote area with little connection to the wider world, surely must have felt both inhibiting and claustrophobic.

‘But it may be that these “negative” aspects are what young people yearning for dis-connectivity actually want – we have a sense that there was a value, now largely lost, in the practical effort required for social interaction, for finding good music, or joining a subculture. Life now in comparison seems streamlined, efficient, in a phenomenon that writer Michael Harris calls a “loss of lack”.

‘Recently, my office manager showed me the technology he and his friends used to “watch” the football on: Ceefax. The football score would load on a television screen via the changing of a single digit. They would spend the afternoon just sitting on the sofa, waiting for the digit to change (or not). I felt envious of this. Why? If anything, this is clearly a case where an experience has improved exponentially. And yet I’m captivated by the sense of mystery: if they weren’t watching the game or reading the updates, what were they doing? What were they occupying their thoughts with?

The reality might be that they were bored, another scarce experience in a connected age. At least, if bored, they would have entertained themselves with internal rather than external resources. [my emphasis] It doesn’t even matter if that was really the case - it is precisely because this experience is unknowable that it is compelling to me. I am haunted by the feeling that spending so much time on our phones has stolen something human and vital from our lives.’

The thing is, we have left almost no space for ourselves in which, well, potentially to be bored. And yet, that capacity for ennui is as vital a human characteristic as eating and breathing – and connecting, face to face, with real people. It can be ‘boring’ to have to look things up by, say going to a local library, checking shelves for volumes that may not be there, or have already be loaned to others. It might be perceived as boring to have to travel anywhere before the activity that comes from meeting others begins. I travelled on a train last week, not all that far, and caught myself staring out of the window, rather than read a book.

And, knowing not just how long the journey would take, but the location of each intermediate stop on the way, I could have allowed myself to be bored. Would that have been that awful an experience. In the statis we define as boredom (but, perhaps, scarcely knowing what that means anymore) thoughts disassemble, reassemble, cohere, coagulate, form into who knows what, except that drifting sense of apparent emptiness – we know – has been the wellspring of so much human creativity.

James Watt, two and a half centuries ago, watching a kettle take forever to boil, might never had uncovered the power of steam unless, in that moment, he may well have actively been bored. Time, then, to rediscover the delights of being bored. Turn off the phone, disconnect the internet and the television, any other media; do not be tempted to read a book; and don’t boil a kettle. Just stay in the silence, allow yourself – again, only potentially – to be bored.

You may be surprised at how enlightening the result can be. Or, consider this. Ikigai is a Japanese concept that means ‘a reason for being’ or ‘a reason to wake up in the morning’. It represents the intersection of what you love, what you are good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for, leading to a fulfilling and meaningful life. Boredom, just maybe, is in the eye of the beholder.

This week: Tim dipped into Philip Davies Robert’s Plain English – a user’s guide, first published in 1987. It is a gem of a book, dealing in turn with grammar, vocabulary, typography, dialects and style. If you write for a living, or if you just wish to improve your writing, including emails or even texts and, if you can find a copy, it is to be recommended. It’s never too late to learn something new about the extraordinary richness of this one language, the preferred lingua franca and for a very good reason of the entire globe.

Quote of the week: ‘If you live each day as if it were your last, Death is hardly unexpected when he calls.’ From Andrew Sinclair in his novel The Raker. It was adapted by Steve Jobs who made it ‘live each day as if it were your last’, to which is sometimes added ‘but believe you will live forever’. It’s a good maxim – the original – and fits Stoic philosophy, if one were to add, ‘and try to live each day as a virtuous individual’.

Music of the week: Schubert’s late song cycle masterpiece, Winterreise (Winter Journey). I had the great privilege of seeing this performed at the Wigmore Hall, a few years ago by Ian Bostridge, the greatest male exponent of Schubert’s Lieder of our time. I was accompanied by the woman who would become my wife. It was a bit of a stretch taking her to see this sublime baritone with just a piano accompaniment, in a 45-minute exposition on the theme of death. But, she was captivated as was all the audience. Schubert wrote well over 600 Lieder in his short life. We have them all in the house in the 37-volume Hyperion CD edition, a project overseen by Graham Johnson. In his version Johnson, who is the pianist on every CD, accompanies Matthias Goerne.