Bored Out Of My Mind? Yes Please!

As Thanksgiving approached this year, our family prepared to travel back to the Midwest for the holiday, something we hadn't done in over ten years. I was determined to allow myself to relax, which meant not being consumed with my phone.

I'm sure I'm just like many of you: intending to check something on my phone and later realizing I've been on it for thirty minutes or more.

I did pretty good, I think. Other than occasionally falling into the black hole of fantasy football statistics, I enjoyed what was going on around me instead of being glued to the phone.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, we went to visit some of my wife's family. We both have lots of family connections to Ohio, which makes it convenient to catch up with them. I was sitting on the couch next to my mother in law, staring into space, when she commented, “You must be bored out of your mind.”

She's always thinking about others and how she can make their day better, whether that be by offering us food or pointing to different options for entertainment.

I've been thinking about that phrase: bored out of your mind. Being bored seems to be an ever present fear in our culture. The sheer number of options for streaming movies and channels is quite dizzying. Streaming was not a thing when I was a kid. You watched whatever happened to be on at the time. If you wanted to watch it later you could try to tape it, assuming the VCR offered that feature. My parents’ generation had far less options, instead being limited to the 3 channels or so that were offered on the TV.

There's something about being bored that makes our skin crawl. My son has never been a fan of school, except for the socializing. The rest of it is terrible because it's…boring.

Recently, whenever I've sat and allowed myself to be understimulated, allowed the noise of the TV and the brightness of the phone to fade away, I have noticed that there is much more going on around me than I realized.

I notice the color of the walls or the contrast of the decorations. I notice that things look different than the last time I slowed down, and that I've neglected to appreciate them. I notice that there are blessings all around me.

But maybe it's not what's around us that makes us so leery of slowing down and letting the noise subside. Maybe it's swirling thoughts going through our head. Anxious thoughts. Angry thoughts. Fearful thoughts. Thoughts we didn't even know we had. Thoughts that might disturb us.

Here we have a golden opportunity-if we utilize it.

Maybe the problem with boredom isn't that it's unpleasant. Maybe we just don't know how to be bored properly. Those thoughts are often the main culprit. When we're bored, we don't just notice the walls and the people. We notice our thoughts, and if we don't know what to do with them, it can be pretty distressing.

So, what do we do with them? The mystics and saints teach us to learn from them-to learn our hang ups and patterns, but also to learn that they are not us. Our thoughts are fleeting, but our identity-which is secured in the Divine-endures.

We get stuck in our heads. Boredom helps us to see that and gives us an opportunity to see our thoughts and let them pass.

Then we can get out of our heads and are left with what's real.

My mother in law and I embraced the boredom and took in the moment: the kids playing, the family conversing, the joy of being together. I suspect as a mother of three grown children and a grandmother to two little boys, she's probably much better at it than I am, but I am learning.

The next time boredom is offered to you, take it and enjoy the opportunity. If you use it wisely, you might even get bored out of your mind.