Taking the fight to boredom
This month's Bearblog carnival is on the topic of boredom, by Winther. There have been so many great entries already. Very cool.
I hear complaints of boredom all the time. It seems to me to be a symptom, rather than the thing unto itself. I think often boredom isn't "there's nothing to do" but more "nothing sounds good to me." At best it's ennui, discontent, aimlessness, listlessness, a sort of dissipation.
People regularly say boredom is good for you... I dunno. It depends. On the person and the kind of boredom. In older or isolated people it can be pretty lethal. At worst it's connected to loneliness and depression. Certainly I think it's worth investigating how someone is experiencing boredom, and why.
Specifically I hear a lot about how this city is boring, there's nothing to do, conversations in the community centre are boring, and so on. But when I say, "Well, what do you want to do?" there's no real answer.
Which is hard for me because there's so much to do in the world! To think about, to learn, to read, to create. Let's do something. But like I said, it's mostly not about that. I've got to have empathy and try to work out what is going on underneath all that.
Often, just doing something is often enough to get other people to join in. If I ask people whether they want to play sudoku they'll probably say no. If I just get the sudoku out and start doing it people will join in.
So part of it is a momentum issue. People aren't so much bored as too tired, distracted, or stressed to think about all the steps towards doing something different. Remove those obstacles and it's a whole different prospect.
Tackling loneliness is a huge part of fighting off boredom. Day-in day-out boredom, loneliness, and isolation is a shocker for mental health. A vicious cycle of causing and caused by.
If that all sounds a bit of a downer the good part is we can remove those obstacles for other people. We can help make the world and people's lives less boring. Bring the fun in. Or at least the variety. Genuinely, we can be the change.