Riding the purple bus up to lap Mid Mountain trail, I noticed the young woman next to me playing a video game on her phone. I have no idea what game it was — basically rows and rows of multicolored squares she seemed to be stacking into like colors. Once the colors were aligned, she swiped them away.
I haven’t played a video game since Ms. Pac Man in the ’90s, but this one seemed kind of dumb. And if I’m being honest, totally boring. I mean, I was bored just watching it.
I looked around the bus. Almost every single person had their head down, staring at their phone. And I have to admit, in that moment, I was itching to do the same. Just for a sec. Just to check the apps, you know.
Why can’t we sit still for a moment and just … be? What’s wrong with doing nothing? Why are we so afraid of being bored?
Yesterday morning after my coffee kicked in, and in a bid to procrastinate work a bit, I began feverishly texting friends to make plans for the Fourth of July. In that moment, I started to realize I am terrified of boredom. I mean, a whole holiday weekend of no plans? What would that be like?
The French call it ennui. It’s that feeling of being tired, dissatisfied, in the doldrums, unconcerned. Gone-ness. I yawned four times just looking up the definition. One researcher described it as “wanting to do something, but not wanting to do anything.” Or my personal favorite, Anna Karenina’s “desire for desires.”
I went back to the kitchen and made another cup of coffee. It didn’t help that I drank a few beers at Offset the night before. Apparently, a slight hangover only exacerbates being bored.
I thought about summers as a kid. The absolute luxury of doing absolutely nothing. I can remember an exact moment of just that kind of boring. I was lying on my back in our side yard, staring up at the sky. I noticed curly floaters, like tiny pieces of fuzz floating in my vision. I plucked the widest blade of grass I could find and put it between my two thumbs to make a loud, honking sound like a bad trumpet. I was bored out of my mind. My lack of purpose was purpose in itself.
And that’s just the point. As Mayo Clinic psychiatrist Ashok Seshadri says, “When people are bored, many important things are happening in the brain. It’s consolidating memories and reflecting on lessons learned.” In this way, boredom actually creates freedom from the constant need to busy your mind, be productive or be entertained.
Sandi Mann, a psychology lecturer and the author of “The Upside of Downtime: Why Boredom is Good,” says, “We’re trying to swipe and scroll the boredom away, but in doing that we’re actually making ourselves more prone to boredom because every time we get our phone out, we’re not allowing our mind to wander and solve our own boredom problems.”
Instead, she says, we’re becoming addicted to the dopamine hit of constant content our phones give us. If you’re a junkie like me, try this: Consciously resist the urge to scroll the next time you’re stopped at a traffic light, in line at The Market or in the waiting room at the doc’s office.
Here’s the thing about boredom. It’s only normal to try to escape it or distract ourselves away from it. But there’s an important message behind the madness. So rather than filling the boredom void, we should try to figure out what’s meaningful to us in that moment.
John Eastwood, the author of “Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom,” says, “Just as we have the capacity for pain to keep us safe, it’s good that we have the capacity for boredom because it saves us from the ruin of stagnation. It keeps us moving forward and searching for a better way of engaging with the world.”
A list of things to do when you’re bored should be titled “Lists? We Don’t Need No Stinking Lists.” Study a cloud. Close your eyes. Watch the dust motes float over a flower. Listen to a far-off bird call. Make sun tea. Skip a stone. Look for a four-leaf clover. Or here’s something: Do nothing. It’s summer in Park City, for chrissake. It doesn’t always have to be about savoring the summit. Why not just savor the moment?
This morning, as I sat on my porch, I noticed two kids playing in the driveway across the street. They looked to be about 5 or 6. One was wearing a pink sundress and a pair of white jellies. The other was dressed in a bright orange tiger costume. They ran back and forth in the driveway. They skipped. They picked up a rock and studied it together. The little girl laughed. The tiger roared. And then, just like that, they — and the moment — were gone.