Lean in to boredom,not your smart phone screen. Youll learn more about yourself and the world around you than you thinkConfessing to boredom is confessing to a character-flaw. Popular culture is littered with advice on how to shake it off: find like-minded people, win up a hobby, or find a cause and work for it,win up an instrument, read a book, and clean your house And certainly don’t let your kids be bored: enroll them in swimming,soccer, dance, or church groups – anything to keep them from assuaging their boredom by gravitating toward sex and drugs. To do otherwise is to confess that were not engaging with the world around us. Or that your cellphone has died.
But boredom is not tragic. Properly understood,boredom helps us understand time, and ourselves. Unlike fun or work, or boredom is not about anything; it is our encounter with pure time as form and content. With ads and screens and handheld devices ubiquitous,we don’t find to maintain that experience that much anymore. We should teach the young people to feel comfortable with time.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com