Boredom

I'm going to risk sounding ancient here, but I'm concerned about something I'm observing in my daughter and her friends lately. They are absolutely, positively unable to tolerate boredom. If they find themselves with more than five minutes' unscheduled time that happens to coincide with nothing to watch on television and no friends on IM, they panic. Fiona actually wailed last night about a workout she was doing that was boring, and she wanted to stop. Aren't most workouts boring? Is entertainment really the point?

Perhaps I'm jealous. I haven't been bored in years simply because I haven't had time to be. But I've always found boredom to be liberating, anyway. When my mind is free to wander, it goes to the most interesting places because it's not fettered by a task or deadline. I had a 3 1/2-day weekend this week, and by day two I was actually able to sit down and write a few paragraphs of fiction because my mind had finally had enough leisure to think creatively. Imagery of wild, beautiful animals being released from captivity comes to mind, but I suppose that's a bit trite.

I wish I could explain to her and her peers how liberating boredom can be, and how they're depriving themselves of these precious moments of nothing set to do, no flickering images before them, no electronic beeps alerting them that a friend is online. I didn't have these things when I was young, of course, and my creativity was fertile. Boredom, paradoxically, made life exciting.

I have no idea how these kids are going to fare when they hit the working world. Much as I generally enjoy myself at work, there's a lot of boredom in board rooms. Sometimes while sitting at my desk, I'm appalled at the lack of enthusiasm I have for some of the items on my to-do list that are less interesting or challenging than others. But I'm convinced that I could never have an original thought if my mind weren't free to wander, so I try to embrace the dull.

I'm sure we can blame the parents (I include myself here). It's so much easier to let the television babysit the kids, and isn't it a relief that they have the computer to entertain them while we're vacuuming? Okay, it isn't, really; but now that I want out of all this and want family time reading together, listening to music, or discussing current events, I realize I may not be able to have it. How are we going to have anything to talk about if we don't create some stillness so we can think? And how can children who've been bombarded with stimulation every minute of their lives possibly bear its absence?

Perhaps I'm just blowing hot air here. We parents complain about how we're losing our children to technology, but we don't seem to be willing to do much about it. For example, we still have a television in the house. Just one, and only in the family room, but there it remains. I'd like to kill it, but perhaps I fear missing out on something if I do.

Perhaps if I sit here at work long enough with nothing interesting to do, I'll come up with the answer.