boredom (from Jan 2008)

Before I started this blog, I wrote facebook notes.  I was just looking through them and found this. (the link won't work unless you are a fb friend.  But don't worry - I've pasted it below.)  I wrote it two years ago and it got some interesting comments.

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Today I have been feeling incredibly bored and the fact that we've maxed out our broadband and are now back to dial up speed hasn't helped...

Anyway I was feeling fidgetty and so thought I'd look on the net. Have you ever noticed how when you are bored there is nothing interesting happening anywhere on the WWW? Incredible, isn't it? Probably didn't help that I lacked the patience to wait for most of the pages to load up.

But I did stumble onto something interesting today. Ben Myers has written a theology of boredom. It's great stuff and it got me thinking about what boredom is and why I feel bored.

To me, boredom is a restlessness with life. A dull anxiety that makes me too impatient to employ myself in meaningful activity. A stuffiness of spirit that makes me blind to the goodness of God around me. A graceless heart gazing with unwonder on the world.

a box
taped shut
a few airholes
for my breath
I push my fingers in
the brief dreams before I expire
are better than this

[cheery, huh!]

Ben raises the question of whether boredom is a sin or an inevitable consequence of living in a fallen world. What do you think?

I'll post my thoughts soon.

ps. Reading Ben's theology of boredom very quickly made me un-bored!

pps. I think boredom is like (very) short term depression. What do you think?