Boredom opens channels. We know that. But only after we’ve swum in some rather turbid waters. Time is so drawn out when we’re bored. The German word for boredom invites us to take the time to understand where our boredom comes from, to swim in the waters. Langeweile. “Lange” means long and “weile” means a while. As I watch our children amble through late June and July –– restless, agitated, lazy –– I realize that unlike them, I never experienced the hot and sticky ennui of summer boredom. I was always surrounded by cousins and grandparents and friends. If I wasn’t learning to sail, I was collecting urchin shells or playing bingo or watching Vougiouklaki films under a hot Athens sky. My childhood summers were idyllic and action packed. This year, summer for our children is a mix of part time jobs, city camps, overnight camp and plenty of boredom. I know they’re at peak boredom when they’d sooner lay on the cool kitchen floor and stare languidly at the ceiling than walk to the ice cream parlour up the street. Our eldest child has worn the same old concert t-shirt everyday this week despite mounds of clean options on her bedroom floor. “I’ll put my clothes away tomorrow,” she’s been saying since June. There’s been so much boredom in our home this summer that at times I fear we might drown in it. Lanegweile. Or maybe it’s just me who’s bored, or more specifically, wrestling with my boredom and projecting my frustrations on to my family? Is it a creative rut? is it the heat? The endless cycles on the dishwasher. The stillnesss of our street. Is it that socialite writer, Derek Blasberg posting shiny pictures on Instagram from our beloved Folegandros? Comparison really is the killer of all joy. And as it happens, a fast track to boredom. But then I watch our son throw tennis balls against a brick wall in the parking lot behind our house and marvel at how utterly absorbed he is in the mindless repetition of it all. Or notice that every chair in our kitchen has turned into a makeshift loom for our youngest child who weaves half a dozen bracelets a day. And when not not putting her clothes away, I see that our daughter morphs from slovenly teenager to Marie Kondo. What I observe in all three children is how boredom, when given room, turns into an urge to do. To tidy, to weave, to throw a ball at a wall. My husband takes to the garden when he’s bored. Or makes a bolognese sauce. He’s a do-er. As Adam Gopnik writes in All That Happiness Is, “genuine happiness is always rooted in absorption in something outside us and begins in accomplishment undertaken for its own sake and pursued to its own odd and buzzing ends.” I know this to be true when I’m absorbed in clay or in the rhythm of my body’s strokes underwater. It’s a heavenly state to be in. It comes and it goes. It’s not something we can hold on to or force into action. And so, I’m surrendering to the boredom, to noticing what I notice. As graphic designer, Ellen Parr says, “the cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
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