Boredom vs. Distraction
May 26, 2009 – 8:15 am
It's amazing what you notice when you are calm
What is the difference between distraction and boredom?
As little children, we are taught to seek and discover, play and create, think and learn. But somewhere around our early teens we experience boredom; that state of an unsatisfied being. It’s as if our minds have been trained to devalue the world around us in pursuit of bigger, better, more.
As we age, boredom takes a back seat to distraction. Work, family, social obligations, all pull at us, demanding our time and our energy. Unless we have balance, this tug becomes a leaden weight, dragging us down until we seek an escape: the distraction of brain-dead television, a good novel, the endless chatter of talk radio. We seek something, anything to relieve ourselves of the obligations of life.
If we’re lucky, something along our path will shock us into the present: illness, an accident, the birth of a child, falling in love. Whatever form it takes, these are gifts of clarity. They open our eyes to the exact nature of being in the moment. Suddenly all other things in life take a back seat to exactly where you are right now.
But what if we could create that same feeling without a catastrophic event? That my friends, is serenity. It is gift of being where you are at all times and valuing that presence without seeking something else.
People laugh at me for getting up at the crack of dawn every day to seek this presence of being. But I’m laughing too. It is this daily exercise that trains my mind to “be.” And because I allow myself this precious serene time, I can then be present during moments with other people, without distraction, without boredom.
Happy Day,
