It was once said that if you find yourself bored then maybe it's you who are boring and not the situation. While that may be true some of the time, I'm not sure I completely agree with it. There are going to be times when the world seems mundane. We've all had those situations where nothing seems to hold our interest and to make things worse, nothing seems interesting enough to pursue. So it becomes this self-perpetuating cycle. Now it could be at that particular moment there is nothing happening that can hold our attention. Maybe it's just a passing lull in events and given enough time, like most things, it will pass. There are times though when it's possible there is something else going on.
It can be a strange feeling to be bored. To an outside observer it may seem strange that a person could be bored in a particular situation. We surround ourselves with various pieces of stimulation and entertainment. No matter how exciting something may be, there may eventually come a time when it doesn't hold the same value as it used to. A hundred channels on television and nothing is on. A thousand songs and none of them are anything that needs to be heard again. It even happens with food, where you know you're hungry, but nothing actually sounds good enough to actually eat. In those situations we tend to just settle for something in order to get past it. We eat a piece of chicken. We play the album we've heard a dozen times. We turn to the channel with something well known.
I've noticed that boredom has a strange way of sneaking up on you. Everything may seem fine before and after boredom takes hold. You're sitting around trying to think of what you want to do and it hits you that nothing sounds good. Today's society seems to be so fast paced that our time has gotten to be even more precious. The day can be broken up into thirds and we really only get one of them to do what we want. That's our time, even if it gets sliced up before we can even say "freedom". Strangely enough though our tiny bit of time isn't always used in the best possible way. We find ourselves watching television or surfing the web for almost mindless things to hold our attention. All this is done until it's time to go to sleep and start the day over again. When was the last time you sat in a room without any external stimulation? No television, internet, music, or even written words. It's hard to do because there seems to be a steady stream of information being thrown at us all the time. We've gotten to a point where it's next to impossible to go without something else invading our thoughts.
Going back to the original statement, maybe it's not just the situation that's boring, but in fact ourselves. What if there are times when our brains require that we don't acknowledge outside stimulation? Every night we're essentially required to shut down our brains so that we can rest and refresh. While we're sleeping our mind is busy sorting through various thoughts without us. What if some of our boredom stems from this strange bit of mental limbo where our brain is trying to go through a period of rest, but we just happen to be awake while it's in progress? In that situation it doesn't matter what we try and do because our mind is attempting to do something that can only be accomplished in isolation. If that's the case then maybe boredom comes in two different flavors. One that comes from an outside situation that lacks the ability to hold our attention. And another that comes from within that is really our mind trying to be at rest. The next time you're bored maybe there is a reason for it.
