ARE YOU BORED?

Sometimes people ask me if I am bored. That’s a bit disarming and I wonder why? Are my facial expressions conveying a message I am not intending? Do they feel they must entertain me or make me happy? Or are they bored but don’t want to admit it?

Today I looked up the definition of boredom. The first meaning I found said, “the state of feeling bored.”(1) Well, that wasn’t very helpful.

According to an article in Psychology Today, “The most common way to define boredom is having nothing to do. Boredom is generally viewed as an unpleasant emotional state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity.”(2)

I would amend that to read “difficulty concentrating on the current reality,” because boredom has a numbing affect. Have you noticed? On the other hand, it can also signal the need for change and a call to action. If you are bored with a task, maybe it is not worth doing or it needs to be done in a different way.

This spring I took an online art course. The instructor constantly talked about creating interest in our paintings. He said the way to avoid boredom in art is to create differences – black/white, large/small, sharp/soft edges, saturated color/unsaturated, etc. During my quarantine at the farm, I tried to put the idea of differences into practice, doing something “different” each day: Changing what I ate for breakfast, combing my hair a different way, etc. I made a game of it.

Here is another way to look at it: “Boredom can be viewed as a crisis of desire.”(3) Wow! What does that mean? For me, it means I have momentarily lost hope, put my desires aside or, for some reason, concluded my desires are no longer worthy or possible, or I am at odds with God over the desires of His heart for my life.

What is God’s antidote for boredom? Here are a few verses; I am sure there are many more that could be applied.

“Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near” (Isaiah 55:6, NRSV).

“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,” (Colossians 3:23, NIV).

If you are bored, be thankful. It means there is something still inside you that is aching to come forth!  I would love to hear how you deal with boredom! Leave a comment or send me an email. Thanks!

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(1) Dictionary.com

(2) and (3) Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201706/eight-reasons-why-we-get-bored