Naina Rajkumari
Science fiction writer, IssacAsimoveonce said: “I don’t believe in afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
One can see what the writer is pointing at: for example, one day an individual looks around and asks, “Is that all there is?” The person finds that the very things that excited him or her just the day before have lost their appeal. One finds that the very passion that was once a driving force has just leaked out of life and that one is simply going through an empty routine. No wonder that, unless the person has been taught what to do with success after getting it, the attainment of it would inevitably leave him a state of utter boredom.
The fact is that, world is eaten up by boredom, although one can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. We go about and never notice it, we breathe it in, eat and drink it. We just need to stand still for a moment and there it is. To shake off this drizzle of ashes one must be forever on the go. And so, people are always “on the go” – if for nothing else than to just get out of boredom. And as Bertrand Russell points out so aptly, “Boredom is … a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.”
Our tendency is to blame boredom on the environment. “This town is really dull” or “What a boring speaker.” Actually though, a particular town or a speaker is never dull; it is you experiencing the boredom, and one can eliminate it by doing something else with your mind or energy at that moment.
The vast majority of so-called civilized and intelligent people seek constant stimulation or subject themselves unconsciously to titillation and distractions during their entire day. We all have seen humorous depictions of somebody seated at the breakfast table, reading the small print on the box of cornflakes because the morning newspaper hasn’t arrived yet. Simply eating one’s fried eggs and savoring the flavor won’t do. Others start their day by listening to the morning news on their radio-cum-alarm clock. They do not hear the early morning bird song outside their window. They drive in their cars or sit in subways or buses, reading the advertisements displayed all around them. They do not see their fellow passengers, or maybe join a child’s cheerful laughter. Everything BUT simply being here and now.
The most interesting reality is that, though we all know what boredom is, most people do not experience sheer boredom very often. We are stressed, rushed, and worried, but we are seldom purely bored–partly because we are so stressed, rushed, and worried. We find a very interesting, yet humorous insight in the words of the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard. He says: “Since boredom advances and boredom is the root of all evil, no wonder, then, that the world goes backwards, that evil spreads. This can be traced back to the very beginning of the world. The gods were bored; therefore they created human beings.”
There is fear in people that lest they are constantly on the move, boredom might set in. Boredom has to be avoided at all cost. So the mind is being fed constantly with useless information and in turn demands more and more like a ravenous monster.
Boredom seems to be a human affliction only, animals and plants don’t appear to be bored. Have you ever watched a dog tirelessly chasing its own tail? The dog most likely sees the tail as something new coming around the corner the whole time! In spite of the fact that we live in an ever changing world people manage to be bored. It is the mind freaking out when there is nothing to do, nothing to occupy it.
We crib of a boring life and look for excitement because we cannot understand the root cause of what makes us bored. Many times we see people advising others to “set goals” and pursue it so that it will keep them focused and there will be no rom for boredom. But is it the solution?
Boredom follows us like a shadow all through our lives if we are not aware. To get out of our mundane lifestyles, some of us cultivate peculiar hobbies yet return back home soon after the euphoria is over, empty handed, followed by boredom.
Once we realize the fact that life is not boring but we are bored in our lives and life is what we make it. “Drop your mind, your mind creates boredom!” – This isOsho speaking. Osho’s following insight is most significant and immensely helpful when He says:
“How is one to overcome boredom?” The first thing to remember, drop your pattern; your mind creates the boredom. And then you will feel mystery all around you. Every day you go to the table, you take your food — it has become a routine. Tomorrow, or this very night when you are eating, close your eyes. First feel the bread with your hands, smell it — you have never smelled it. Touch it on your cheek — you have never touched it. And be slow, so you can feel and you can absorb. And then eat it, then taste it. Chew it as much as possible.
It should be the rule that while drinking water, eat it, and while eating food, drink it. Chew it so much that it becomes just like water and you can drink it. And when you drink water, don’t drink it abruptly, don’t just throw it down. Taste it. When you are thirsty just feel the water on your tongue, in your throat going down, the thirst disappearing — the feel of it. And even ordinary food can become wonderful. An ordinary woman can give you all the mysteries that any Cleopatra can give. An ordinary man is all — because ordinariness is just in your mind; otherwise everybody is extraordinary, everybody is unique. But you have to discover it.
Life is not given readymade, it has to be discovered. You get bored because you think life is readymade, somebody is going to give it to you. Nobody is there to give it to you. You have to discover it moment to moment, every day. The discovery must continue to the very end. If you stop discovery you will be bored.
You have stopped discovery, long ago you stopped discovery completely. Start again. Start feeling things, persons, try to find out something new always. Wherever you look — in the sky, at the trees, at the market, at the shop — wherever you look just be in a search to see something new. And there is enough, you will never feel a failure. Always the new will bubble up, the life will again become a mystery.
And when life becomes a mystery you become religious. A demystified life cannot lead you towards the divine. The divine means the deepest mystery that is hidden in this life.
Another typical attitude of the mind is to ‘kill time’. One has an hour or two with nothing to do before an appointment, so a magazine is flipped through idly, a dim-witted afternoon TV show switched on, a game of solitaire … there is nothing wrong with reading a magazine, watching a foolish show or playing cards if this is done with full awareness! But drowning out the mind with chatter and entertainment does not prevent boredom from setting in.
It is a terrible waste not to celebrate the abundance showered on us by existence every moment and rather drift into a comatose state of boredom and remain stuck there. We must readily explore every new aspect and nuance coming into our lives, and take the risk of walking on a previously unknown road.People are really afraid of change. Even if the change is for the better, they are afraid. They are afraid of the new because the mind becomes very clever with the old and is always embarrassed with the new. With the new the mind has to learn again from ABC and who wants to learn? The mind wants the world to remain static. Nobody wants to learn, to grow, to be acquainted with the new. People want to go on moving in the old rut, and then naturally they are bored. They are creating the boredom, and they don’t see the mechanism of how they create it.
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