I'm Bored

Liar!!!

I feel bored.

Well, at least you’re getting a little more honest. When you first read this page’s title and tacitly agreed with it, you were lying. You’re never bored any more than you’re never a rock. It’s physically impossible. Now I grant you that if you agreed with the second line you read, “I feel bored,” you may be stating something closer to the truth, but only because you are not thinking about what you are saying, and you really believe you are “feeling” bored. But that is not true either.

If you think about it, you must agree that boredom is better described as an absence of feeling, rather than something you feel. If your brain and body are functioning properly, you cannot really NOT feel your environment, the things around you, but you can will your brain to ignore the sensory inputs it receives. Boredom is something you will – you choose it, not something you “feel.”

Today is just the same as yesterday, you think. The smells, the sounds, the touches, the tastes, and the sights --- all the same. I know them so well I need not think about them. I WILL to ignore them --- I “feel” bored. That truly is a description of boredom. But wait one second: if you chose to ignore your senses, then your brain IS working. You ARE thinking! So, I’d suggest --- just as a thought --- that you might think of something else, to relieve this boredom you “feel, and so disgusts you.”

So what might you think of? Speaking strictly for myself, when I am in that state of mind, I have to start slowly to change my mind’s focus. I often start with just staring out the window. Oh yes, if I CHOOSE to continue my bored “feeling,” I’ll look outside at the things there and say: “same, same, same, and same. Boring!” I could CHOOSE to do that, and if I do, I must really love my boredom, to want to keep it so strongly. And it would indeed take strength and will, because if I am honest with myself, I can never look outside and say of everything I see there: “same ol’, same ol’.” God did not create an earth made solely of unmoving rocks – at least not in my backyard.

In my yard this morning, I saw spring flowers, blooming brightly, and smelling wonderful (if I “chose” to smell them). I saw new green growth on trees, and buds on the bushes. And today I even saw a duck sitting in the (un-mowed) grass beside my deck. I thought: “I wonder if he is just resting (bored?), or is he looking for a nesting site?” It proved to be the latter, I think, for soon I saw a female duck nearby. Perhaps I’ll have some new ducklings in the near future, to avoid as I do my yardwork.

Perhaps I am “feeling” ---wait! Hmmm, I am thinking again. My brain has gone out if its self-willed “bored” neutral. I find I could not look into the yard at God in his creation and in his beauty, and not be moved with some “feeling”. And, strangely, this “feeling” was not willed by me. But neither did my five senses trigger it. Some might say that my sight triggered this new thinking, but I assure you, had I been looking at nothing but rocks (rocks I had seen a thousand times before as if I were living on the moon), I would still “feel” bored. No, God in his creation and creatures moved me with their beauty. And the beauty was not something I sensed; he came into me in a way beyond the senses for me to “feel” the beauty. And I thought about it.

If we are ever in the situation where we “feel” bored with what our senses are telling us, we are not being true to ourselves, and our very nature, if we do not turn our mind to things beyond our senses. God gave man so many gifts of the Spirit, amazing wonderful things to ponder, things beyond our senses. He is one of them.

And for these things we will never reach the point of saying “same, same, and same.” For God is never the same, in any “sense” of the word. God is always newly beautiful, newly knowledged, newly loving. You can never get enough of him, or all he has done for us. You can start with the simple, the things and creatures he created for us, and admire their beauty, but that’s just a start. The saints, the poets, the philosophers have just begun to describe Him. There is so much for us to think on, learn, and love. It is endless; it is not boring.

God didn’t create us to be bored. Everything he created, day by creation’s day, was for us. He even gave us women. Then he even gave us himself. Not to relieve our boredom with life, but to teach us what life really is. It is not boring. If you look at everything outside you and think “what a waste”, it is not the things outside of you which are a waste.



Thank you, Lord, for this day. This day that is not boring, but is beautiful, even as you are beautiful. Thank you, Lord.