The question, my dear Watson, has always been, "Do I
believe in afterlife?" And even though I am no Sherlock, for me, the
answer has always been a straight "NO".
Because even if there is one, it will never be the same 'ME'
again and then I will anyhow prefer the 'Tortures of Hell' over the 'Boredom of
Heaven' once my current self is done with the life.
But enough about 'afterlife'. I am not writing to discuss the
psychic boundaries and certainly not for their so called interpretations. I am
here to write about what has become my recent state of mind - 'Boredom'.
Boredom - What an intriguing word or rather a sentence! One that
has no full stop. Channel of continuity with a rather sublime streak of
monotonous life.
I have been feeling bored quite lately. And a lot of it to drive
me to the extent of writing a post on it. But before you start getting
ideas, No...I haven't been kicked out of my employment yet. Neither have I been
running less on my eccentric muses.
I am bored because I have been playing my normal self for a bit
too long now.
Weird isn't it? You may ask, even rubbish this and stop reading.
Who gets bored of being his usual self?
Boredom is surprisingly stressful. And when we’re busy, but
still bored, it’s even more so. And I am quite sure most of you, who have
managed to read so far, suffer from the same disease.
But let's discuss the premise first, A handful of times
throughout my social life I have been accused of being boring. Initially, such
statements were pretty boring in themselves, but then they started making me
restless, because I, like so many others, have been conditioned to believe that
“boring” was negative and something to aspire not to be.
But then, after much contemplation, I began to consider the
source of the statement and then consider the context in which the statement
was made. Having analyzed both aspects, I have come to own my boredom thesis. I was
not boring, for every time I was deemed boring...in a societal meeting, I was
just being ‘oblivious’ of my not-so-interesting surrounding.
By the looks of it, I have come pretty far from that state. Now
I only ‘look’ boring. Yes, I do! And people who have actually met me will agree
with the fact (though internally I long that someone disagrees here). But,
anyhoo...that’s where it ends...looks!
As far as the real life is concerned, it’s actually quite
exciting.
Well, how many of you watched the motion pictures, “The Secret
Life of Walter Mitty"? Because I did, and loved every bit of it. The
imagination, the landscapes, the story et al. However, I don’t take the
protagonists life case as exacted to mine ‘cause I believe in the ‘Real’ stuff.
Stuff that I can touch, feel and experience. Not imagine.
I travel a lot. Observe people. I write more than I actually
read. I get to meet interesting people from society’s diverse echelons. I have
been lucky enough to have some unique experiences in life. I get to spend
months living full-time with teams of high performers in such unique
environments as elite sports and war hospitals. I have more projects in the
pipeline than I can shake a stick at. I am busy. But I am still bored.
Well, now you may ask. Why the boredom now?
My boredom stems not from having nothing to do but from
having nothing that seems worthwhile doing. We human beings are addicted
to meaning, and this kind of existential boredom signals its unhappy retreat.
Surely, it shouldn't ever be as if you never existed at all?
The funny thing is, if boredom were due simply to lack of stuff
to do it could be eradicated by giving people more to do. Even relatively
mundane tasks will help alleviate the feeling of utter uselessness. However,
this is only ever likely to work in the short-term if what people are asked to
do does not contribute directly to something more meaningful — something bigger
than themselves.
Likewise, if boredom were the result of having had too much of a
good thing — the novelty has worn off, the sense of excitement has gone — it
could be solved by giving people something new to do. This is one way that many
people are busy but bored at work, and this type of boredom is particularly
acute with high performers and with people who take to tasks quickly but are
easily bored by them. There are some obvious fixes — such as job rotation, or a
training program to broaden skills, or a larger portfolio of responsibilities —
and usually this kind of boredom can be eradicated after a while.
But how do we fix our working lives when we suffer from the
boredom of having more than enough to keep us busy all hours of the day, but
nothing that gives us meaning?
And so it ultimately seems that the only obvious solution to
existential boredom is to give people something more meaningful to do.
In fact, I occasionally ask the working class: if your
organization disappeared overnight, aside from you and those that depend on you
financially, who would actually care about this? Who would be affected by it,
and why? There are many variations on these existential questions, and you will
no doubt have yours, but their object is always the same: to wake people up to
the realization that what they do on an everyday basis actually matters.
Left to your own devices, how might you address this? If meaningful
work is too much to ask, why not develop a passion instead? Is it any surprise
that many high achievers have “other lives”, or a competence in a skill
unrelated to their everyday work? For example, in my own line of work, some of
the most highly respected business folks are also quite accomplished in other
areas. These include a poet, an adventure enthusiast and a basket-ball
champion.
To sum it up, boredom or no boredom, the ifs and buts of it lies
only in the single theory – would you be bored if:
a. you have nothing to do
b. you have stuff to do you don’t find interesting?
c. you have a bucket list so full that even a hole at the bottom
of the bucket doesn't make a difference?
I will go with the third personally with rather two holes in the
bottom.
After all Friedrich Nietzsche was just understating when he
said,” “Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?”
It indeed is. I am bored again, and I am not yet finished!
-V!K$
