The Beauty in Boredom
On my recent vacation to Poland, I didn’t take my phone off of airplane mode. A small gesture- partly done to save the $10/day roaming fees (anyone who knows me knows that I am seriously cheap), but also to proactively limit my device time to when I was in the apartment where there is wifi- so in other words, to disconnect.
Much has been written about how tech executives don’t let their own kids use their products- phones, tablets etc- nor do they let them use social media. This should be a huge flag to the rest of us. I suspect one day electronic devices will come with Surgeon General warnings akin to trying to dissuade pregnant women from drinking alcohol…”Warning- this device and the content it contains, will make you and your kids stupid!”. In the meantime, it is up to us to restrain ourselves from the seductive allure of seeing who posted what on Facebook.
Being disconnected made this vacation the most vacation-y vacation I have had in a long time. We didn’t do too much in the way of site seeing- most of our time was spent with family and friends, eating relaxed meals and walking around in familiar places enjoying the warm last days of summer. I found that even when I had access to wifi, it was still more fun to do a crossword puzzle or to try to decipher what was being said on Polish tv than it was to get plugged into my phone. Napping is good too. So is chatting. Sometimes it was boring- and how refreshing was that!
Middle-aged and older adults reminisce a lot about being bored as kids- and for good reason. Our nostalgia for “going outside and playing” with friends, or for building forts indoors with pillows and other stuff around the house- these were different kids of play times than many kids have today. It is a huge loss to not get to the point of boredom- where your brain then has to kick in to figure out how to entertain itself. I fear that we are willfully becoming zombies- staring at screens and not engaging with the world or with each other- in the way we once did.
Now back from vacation, the goal is to stay off the devices for all of us. Board games, cooking together- and even staring at the ceiling- all have more to recommend them. It is in the boredom that comes from having to find the fun that life can really happen.
