When my floor goes quiet at midday after everyone has left for classes, everything becomes still.
The showers stop running, the echoes in the stairwells stop and the motion sensor light in the hallway turns off.
I’m too aware of my feet in my socks, the teeth in my mouth and the bracelets on my wrist.
I’m bored.
Most people would immediately reach for their phone, their earbuds or anything else to occupy their mind. The seconds-long attention span of our generation has made us fear sitting alone with our thoughts.
“The less people experience boredom, the less equipped the brain is to deal with it,” according to Ashok Seshadri, M.D., in a Sept. 14, 2022 Mayo Clinic article. Concerning brain health as well as mental health, boredom helps stimulate creative thinking and problem solving, according to the same article.
If you constantly replace your boredom with stimulus, there won’t be any time left to get to know yourself.
When I’ve exhausted my options for entertainment, my mind starts to reveal my most pressing thoughts. Usually, this is the thing I am most anxious about, but other times my mind simply wanders.
A lack of external distraction leads to introspection, which can be scary.
Sitting with your thoughts—the thoughts that seem to keep rising to the top of your mind, the ones that make you comfortable and the ones that make you uncomfortable—can open you up to learning about yourself on a deeper level.
It is important to have moments for self-reflection so you can improve your self-awareness, emotional intelligence and personal well-being. Taking a minute to seriously think about your actions, your wonders and your feelings can all open the door to yourself a crack more at a time.
I’ve found sitting with my thoughts to be the times when I feel most at peace. Staring at nothing and allowing your thoughts to explore themselves like a Minecraft map of your mind might just lead you to some gold.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned how to sit with boredom more often.
As a child, I could barely get through the long car rides my family used to take from Virginia to Connecticut. It would usually end with a breakdown because I was so restless.
On recent trips, I’ve been able to sit and think for miles at a time.
When you actively fight against boredom, it will fight back. Accepting and welcoming boredom is the key to moving through it.
Alternatively, maybe being bored and simply not thinking are also necessary.
Letting your mind be still, allowing the thoughts to pass through without stopping and acknowledging that they’re there but not fretting over it, can be meditative.
Feeling the need to immediately fill any inkling of boredom is not unique. We all feel it.
Many times, that’s how we find interests and hobbies. From instruments to arts to sports, picking up something new might just be what you were looking for the whole time.
Boredom may seem like an evil entity that you want to try so desperately to rid yourself of, but it is a necessary evil we all have to face.
