Bored

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

I wonder how often the phrase I'm bored… came out of your mouth as a child? I know it crossed my lips a fair few times, during my years at primary school. As I grew older the phrase appeared less and less, in fact I can't remember the last time that phrase crossed my lips and I don't recall it ever crossing them in my years since university.

That's troubling.

Does it mean I'm no longer getting bored? Do I get bored and no longer acknowledge it preferring to let myself while away the hours fiddling around on the internet or vedging out on the sofa?

Am I capable of getting bored or does the constant gratification provided by the various apps on my iPhone prevent it?

We live in a world where constant gratification of boredom is readily available. A world where children are growing up with iPhones and iPads available to them as soon as they are talking, if not before. Will these children be able to get bored?

These are worthy questions to consider, if people can no longer get bored, and I mean really bored. How will creativity flourish? Creativity out of boredom is a different kind of creativity to that which takes place at work. Boredom creativity is far stronger and more expressive than any other. When we are so bored that we decide to do something because it interests us, that's when some of the most exciting creativity happens. A child who picks up a guitar and starts picking/strumming a song simply because they are bored isn't playing that guitar for practise, they're playing it with a desire to create. A desire to occupy their mind and to express themselves in a way they've perhaps never done before. The same goes for an artist who picks up a sketch book, and a writer who picks up a pen.

This is as much a challenge to myself as it is to anyone reading this. Do we allow ourselves to get bored? To get so bored we are compelled to do something productive out if it. Are we capable of letting creativity born out of boredom take place, or do we just occupy our minds with the latest free game on the appstore that's taking Twitter by storm?