The boredom

I don't remember the last time I was bored. Not because my life is exciting and all not the moment boredom creep in, my hand reached for my phone almost automatically va few taps, and endless stream of videos or memes or news or posts and suddenly twenty minutes disappear. Then an hour. Sometimes even more. I tell myself that I am just taking a short break but the break somehow because an entire Evening.

What is strange is that doom scrolling rarely makes me feel better. I keep scrolling hopeing the next reel would be funnier or more interesting or somehow worth the time I have already spent. Instead I end up feeling mentally exhausted without having actually done anything. My mind feels full but not fulfilled. It is like eating junk food when you are hungry. It fills you up but you are not nourished.

I have also noticed how uncomfortable we have become with silence. Years ago,waiting in queue meant looking around and observing people or simply letting your thoughts wonder. A bus ride meant staring our if the window. Even sitting alone for ten minutes was not considered unusual. Now the smallest pause feels like an oppertunity to unlock out phone. We have become afraid of empty moments as if our minds must be occupied every second of the day.

The hardest part is what it is doing to out attention. I catch myself reading the same paragraph twice because my mind drifts off mid sentence. I start watches a movie but instinctively my minds reached for my phone halfway through. Even conversations sometimes compete with notifications. We have trained our brains to expect something new every few seconds. And now anything that requires patience feels unusually difficult. Deep focus has quitely become sqill we are slowly forgetting.

The irony is that some of my best ideas have come from moments when I had nothing to do. While taking a walk. Sitting in a terrace suring a power cut. Waiting for the rain to stop. Boredom used to be the birth place of my creativity. It forced our minds to wander to imagine and to reflect. We replace imagination with endless consumption and without realising we list something valuable.

I am not saying ohoens are the problems they have connected us in incredible ways, taught us new skills and given us access to more knowledge than any generation before us. But like any powerful tool it demands balance. The problem begins when we stop choosing to use them and start reaching to them out of habit. When weaching for a screen becomes more natural than sitting quietly with our thoughts.

May the next time boredom knocks I won't rush to silence it. May be I will let it stay for a while. I will watch the clouds and listen to the sounds around me or simply allow my mind to wonder without Distraction. Perhaps the boredom is not something we need to escape. Perhaps it is an invitation to reconnect with ourselves. And in a world that constantly asks for our attention maybe the most meaning full thing we can do is learn how to give some of those attention back to out won life.