Boredom
Boredom 2020 Part 1. Curiosity.
Do you have childhood memories of long car trips (sitting in the back seat looking out the window when not arguing with a sibling); or visits to certain older relatives who could only deliver chin-chucks and pointless advice about how to be a nice person? Wasn’t it boring.
This type of boredom probably welled up from strong emotions of being trapped and lacking control. Can we call this situational boredom? (In the follow-up article I will identify a second type of boredom.)
In situational boredom you will also feel anxious and restless. Most of all you will be absent in your mind, as you daydream about other possibilities in that moment in time. Now let’s move beyond the instance of situational boredom to more enduring forms.
Suppose your job is not satisfying you, or your weekends seem to be devoid of desirable activities and you find yourself looking at the clock or reading the newspaper with neither enjoyment nor enlightenment. The aim is to try something radically different from your routine. Here are some ideas you can try out that may help you escape this entrenched form of boredom:
· Look at your neighbourhood in a different way. Linger to look at flowers, drink at a new coffee shop, walk down an unfamiliar street.
· Listen more closely to a friend’s point of view that you disagree with. Try to build a bridge of common beliefs, as you question your own.
· Do something that makes you feel uncomfortable. An example a friend gave me is learning to skate or rollerblade backwards. No thanks, but it sounds challenging.
Inside these three examples the word “curious” is embedded. Hence curiosity may be the antidote you need for your boredom.
The examples above are nothing more than a sample, but there are many more to try out and test to see if they suit you.
Retirement is certainly a time when you can feel bored. After all you have 7 days a week at your disposal. But if you open yourself to curiosity life in retirement doesn’t need to have you pining away under a cloud of boredom. Those first few years of retirement are too precious to waste.
You now have plenty of time to re-define your activities and re-orient the way you spend your day. Finally, the probability of sitting in the back of your parents’ car, or being press-ganged into visiting a great aunt has been severely trampled on by the march of time.
Retirement: You won’t know what it is like until you get there.