Giles Frasier of The Guardian thinks a little bit of boring is good for us. It’s a counter-cultural suggestion in a world that’s “pathologically fearful” of boredom, as we’ve noted before. But Frasier doesn’t stop there:
Indeed, I think the church has been heroically counter-cultural in its defense of that little bit of the week that one can reasonably expect to be just a little bit dull, where our seemingly insatiable desire to be endlessly absorbed by some diverting intervention is challenged.
Why do we feel guilty and fearful about being bored? (Does the ‘Busy’ Trap sound familiar?) Do our lives really require constant entertainment and stimulation in order to retain their meaning? Or should we embrace those moments when we’re forced to confront ourselves, our emptiness, our dependance? They might, after all, lead us to somewhere (or Someone) we were meant to go to in the first place.
“All man’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone,” Pascal wrote in his Pensées (which, incidentally, is where our podcast got its name). We certainly couldn’t say it better ourselves. But Pascal isn’t the only one who hits a little too close to home on the same subject; there’s always Calvin and Hobbes:
