Monday 9 December 2013

A Cure For Boredom

Lately I've been inspired by the movie "Yes Man" in which actor Jim Carrey plays a guy who never says yes to things, that is until he enrolls in a program that forces him to always say yes. And this simple "yes" changes his life. Maybe that's the cure for boredom, saying yes to things. You start something and then you get engrossed in it, but you need to start it in the first place. Starting new things can range from really interesting to really boring. So skydiving is an interesting thing to do, maybe frightening but interesting nevertheless. Playing the guitar, the thought of it is really interesting, the moment you actually pick it up and find out that it's nearly impossible to play, that's when it gets boring and then again once you get the hang of it, you are hooked for life.

Maybe saying yes is really the answer to boredom. But then again, anything funny is also a cure, just look at the number of hits those funny cartoons rake in. Basically put, boredom is nothing but the desire to seek something that entertains us. Keeps us happy and diverts the mind from thinking. Then maybe being bored is a good thing because we may be able to make informed decisions because we are not occupied with other things. This may be true but only conceptually, because our minds can never stay bored and think of all sorts of random things when we are bored. This gives us an interesting possibility, what is we could control the random things and do more productive things instead? Or is it what we already do?

We all have seen people do amazing things as a hobby, as something they do when they are bored. Now obviously these things are not entirely useless and almost all of them require immense thinking and creative ability. So the question goes much deeper if excessive stress on the mind is not the cause of boredom then what is? and more importantly why do we even get bored? I do not have answers to these questions, food for thought maybe. So looks like we've hit a wall. But let's continue anyway. So we can be certain that the mind does not dull down when we do something while we are bored, maybe that's because our brains actually want some activity and it appears its selective and maybe it just needs something else to ponder on about. And if that's the case anything other than what you are doing should be a cure for boredom even counting the number of o's in this article.