by Ivan Yankov
24/09/2024
Meet Elaine. Elaine is a cheerful and lively 8-year-old that has just come back from her last day at school. The long-awaited summer vacation is before her - so many things to do, places to go, and friends to play with… Not an hour has passed, and she turns to her mother with some terrible news:
“Mom, I am bored,” she declares.
Concerned as she is, the mother suggests plant-watering, book-reading, picture-drawing, but definitely no TV-watching. So, Elaine goes on and waters the plants, reads a picture book, draws some squiggly lines, none of which seems to amuse her.
“Mom, I am still bored” …
Meet Luke. A 16-year-old aspiring student, with an impressive record at school, has a few friends, a hobby, and a crush that he does not talk about. Friday evening comes along with the promises and opportunities of the long awaited weekend. And yet, he is bored beyond comprehension. Surprisingly, video games do not seem to help with this new profound boredom. His dad notices something is different and suggests that Luke turns off the computer and phone for the next two days.
“I see, dad - you want me bored out of my mind for two days… Nice!”
Meet Boredom. Boredom is as old as mankind. Boredom likes colourful objects. Shiny things that move, make noise, and things that Boredom has not previously seen. If a thing can interact with Boredom - all the better! Boredom does not like to sit idle and would make use of her surroundings in a new way if no new objects are in sight. She would use a chair for a shield, a cup for a hat, and a cat for a dragon. Once Boredom was so bored, that she would push a boulder downhill for weeks, and at the end she had discovered that the boulder had become smoother and could move much more easily than when she started. She would discover that if you grind two rocks long enough they might hiss and puff, and occasionally produce a very hot sparkle. Boredom has discovered many of the things in our world today. Not all, but quite a few. And all she had was “time to kill.”
Digitally provided entertainment puts its user in the position of a passive participant. New ideas and information are constantly provided to the user, thus ruling out the necessity for generating one’s own ideas and creating one’s own entertainment.
To be creative is to be (pro)active. It is to be open to your environment and actively engaging with your surroundings. It is to see the world as it is, and as it could be. Then work towards merging them together.
So, when Elaine and Luke posed their questions, baffled, the response they got was: “Then be bored if you must.”
And bored they were. Elaine stared at the ceiling for a good half an hour before she started imagining fairies and magical forests, brave knights, and evil kings. So, she quickly grabbed the nearest notebook and started writing one of her very first fairy tales with elaborate illustrations. Luke, in quite the teenagerly manner, started off by hating his life. Then moved on to the old LEGOs sitting on the bottom shelf. Then, an idea! What if he could build a machine with all the unused bolts and nuts in the rusty toolbox in his father’s garage. In this process, he gets an even bigger idea, but he needs his friends’ help to utilise it.
Luke applied for an engineering university in two years. Elaine and Luke’s parents allowed their children to be bored. And they should! Because boredom fosters creativity.
