Boredom: Portal To Being

Start with a passage from Catch-22:

Dunbar was lying motionless on his back again with his eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll’s. He was working hard at increasing his life span. He did it by cultivating boredom. Dunbar was working so hard at increasing his life span that Yossarian thought he was dead.

Let us now imagine that mid-twentieth century German philosopher Heidegger’s has been invited onto the pages of Joseph Heller’s satirical novel. The Heidegger of our imagination is now nudging Yossarian aside to observe that Dunbar, far from being dead, is actually closer to “being” than ever before. It is within this state of profound boredom that Dunbar becomes intimately exposed to the structure of existence.

By this means Dunbar now discovers meaningful ways to project himself into the world. Heidegger sees boredom as the means to discover the freedom to choose how we want to act within our world – a reset, if you will, an existence based on thoughtful intentionality, rather than some contrived illusion (click: Heidegger's "Profound Boredom": Cultivating the Soul).

We might discuss our own relationship with boredom, whether we avoid it, hate it, or fear it with a kind of panic response, depression, or neurotic avoidance. Such might be a signal that something is off. Some might address this avoidance through constant travel, bringing to mind Blaise Pascal’s observation, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he doesn’t know how to stay quietly in his room.” Others might escape by means of the always-on digital world.

Such escapes limit the deeper kind of reflection that allows us to engage with life and ourselves more fully, rendering us as a kind of ghostly refuge running on autopilot. To be bored is to be unafraid of our interior life, a form of moral courage central to being fully human.

Creativity might actually be a by-product of stillness. Perhaps think of times you had a problem that seemed intractable in the evening only to find it having been magically resolved by sleeping on it. Don’t wait for boredom, search it out. Allow boredom to reveal its message, whether the encounter lasts hours or seconds. Boredom reframed as unappreciated serenity may just change your life.

Taoist philosophers describe the process as creating a void. If need be lie down motionless on your back with your eyes staring up at the ceiling like a doll’s.

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