Bring Back Boredom
Your soul is dying from overstimulation
It is not wise to put a playroom on the top floor of a four-story apartment building, especially when it has ceiling windows that might as well be ladders to the roof. And we were just kids. Unsupervised kids. Bored unsupervised kids.
We started by opening the window and scraping snow off the slanted roof to make snowballs to throw at each other. Soon, there was no more snow within reach. That’s how my ten-year-old self and my eight-year-old brother wound up standing on the roof of our building on an army base near Heidelberg, Germany.
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Of course, as soon as we were on the roof, we just had to throw snowballs at some woman walking down below like a tiny ant under our almighty gaze. Ah, but she saw us! We were made. Quickly, we jumped through the window and ran back to our apartment, hoping she would never find out who we were or where we lived. Thankfully, she didn’t.
I didn’t tell my mom about the escapade until years later. Still, even as an adult, if I had told her in person, she would have probably beaten me within an inch of my life. After all, she brought me into this world…
The restlessness of boredom urges us towards God. It leads us to adventure, creativity, and the irresistible search for beauty.
Boredom led me to chase hogs barefoot in a swampy Florida forest.
Boredom led my brother and me to leave our home in Black Mountain, NC, for hours at a time to climb a nearby mountain without trails, again barefoot, to watch the sunset from the peak, and to find our way home in the near dark.
Boredom led me to read many of the classics when my father kept us from school. They were free online and helped me make up for only having a fifth-grade education.
Boredom led me to bike around town, pick cherries I wasn’t supposed to, and discover new places even my parents had no idea existed.
Boredom led me to see how high I could climb that old cedar tree. I then sliced open my thumb with a pocket knife while working to cut a branch from that tree to make a bow. I have a scar today and still smile whenever I feel it.
Boredom led me to make a dart gun out of a PVC pipe, wire coat hangers, and duct tape. I used it to peg lizards to the fence when we lived in Florida.
Boredom led me into photography, and I began to see the beauty in every part of the world. Teenage me took pictures of everything, from wild bears to bumblebees to sunsets and flowers, all because I was bored.
Boredom led me to the arts. I can still play simple tunes on the piano, and I taught myself to draw portraits; I used to be halfway decent!
I hated boredom, yet boredom was one of my closest friends. I had the privilege of a childhood filled with boredom.
Perhaps you had such a childhood?
And then the machine came and stole our childhood. The algorithm declared, “No more boredom!” and we lunged for stimulation like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, our eyes pried open, not with clamps, but by our dread of silence. And with the loss of our boredom, we lost our sense of adventure, creativity, and connection.
You can watch it in public: parents, fleeing boredom themselves, passing their tech gluttony on to their children. At a restaurant, that family will have no less than one device per person, and often more, their attention consumed by screens lest they have to deal with the boredom of an everyday family conversation. Never mind the fact that such boredom once urged families to do something together, to say something to each other and expect a response. No, little Johnny needs an iPad lest I have to exert any emotional effort. Sally is bored. She doesn’t need parents, she needs Roblox.
Endless digital stimulation is like a self-indulgent, purposeless climax for the brain, release without meaning, appetite without satisfaction. Doomscrolling is as the sin of masturbation, and leaves a similar shameful aftertaste.
Worse, we are guiding our children into this same effortless self-pleasure by our example because we won’t put down our own phones and be parents, much less adults. Given the choice, kids will pick the iPad, the TV, or the console every time. How do I know that? Because you’re an adult, and that’s what you pick. Can we expect children to be more mature than their parents?
Bring back boredom.
In play, we find God. No child plays to his fullest unless he is first bored. His boredom urges him to adventure, and in adventure, he entirely loses himself in the discovery of himself and in nature, the laws of the universe, and ultimately, God. The little girl explores her creativity and, over time, through skill and experience, finds that what she is grasping to create is nothing less than a portrait of the Almighty.
All this is lost if there is no boredom. If there is no silence. If there is no nagging restlessness to do something with yourself.
In our discomfort, we have traded the transcendental for trinkets and baubles. God has prepared a table for us, and the gluttons we are, we have chosen to dine on saccharine dainties instead of God’s satisfying wonders. But if we would deprive ourselves for but a moment of these passing whims, do you think God would allow us to gaze upon him in all his glory? Do you think he might give us the longing to play once again? Will our anxiety ever be satisfied if we do not first ponder our restlessness and sit quietly in it, altogether weighed down by boredom and silence, till, all at once, we have a revelation?
Ah, to run through a forest? Yes! To climb mountains! To paint masterpieces, to read the classics, to play a melody on the piano over and over and over again until you hear the notes as words in your ears saying, “Well done, my child. Well done!” and pride so rises in your chest because you realize you have won! You have accomplished something meaningful that reflects the one who breathed you into existence.
Go!
Do something!
Do anything!
Even if it’s dangerous.
Especially if it’s dangerous.
And the next time your child says, “I’m boooooored,” don’t hand him an iPad. Take it as a compliment to your parenting and say, “Good. Be bored.” And you will have given him something far better than a passing whiff of a cheap perfume; you will have filled his nostrils with a longing for the sweet savor of God.
Beautiful.
Like so many of your adventures, Joshua, my boredom is often relieved in getting away from the digital world and roaming the mountains where I now live, not far from Black Mountain. There is never another view from new crest that won’t display the wonders of God’s creation.