Why being bored is important

There’s an old story about the noonday demon and a monk named Ciro. One version tells us that the monk always worked diligently, until the wicked midday sun came to torment him. The heat exhausted him, made him question everything, and the demon — which the Greeks called acedia — whispered things to him, making him feel even worse. Exhausted, the poor monk asked a wise man for help. And the sage told him: “Your boredom isn’t an external emptiness, but an emptiness within you that you can fill.” And that’s what he did. Instead of running away from boredom, the monk faced it, sitting in silence, defying acedia. Curiously, the demon gave up when it saw that the monk had begun to enjoy his boredom, finding meaning in it.

A few weeks ago, I told my students a story about someone who, incredibly, actually managed to get bored; he managed to do nothing! (wow). It seems so obvious and strange at the same time that it hardly seems worth mentioning, but boredom — real, genuine boredom — is becoming a luxury good, thanks to the endless temptations we have at hand to avoid thinking. Because if there’s something that benefits certain actors in our current context (politicians, some companies, some influencers, etc.), it’s that we not think and simply do what they tell us. “Why spend 10 when you can spend 100,” and no one puts it that way, because persuasion is as silent as it is effective.

There’s a challenge that comes from an idea by the mathematician Blaise Pascal: stay in your room doing nothing. Pascal believed that our unhappiness comes from our inability to stay still. I don’t fully agree, because it’s thanks to restlessness that civilizations move forward, but that it may fall into decline because we don’t know how to be bored — and do something with it — is worth pondering.

It’s very important to truly be able to and know how to get bored. That is, to stay seated, simply contemplating, without reaching for your phone or another one of those attractive stimuli of the moment. My students confessed to me — laughing — that they haven’t been bored recently because it’s simply impossible. They have so much at their fingertips, so many platforms, so much e-commerce, so much noise, that there’s barely even an option. The risk is that this constant overstimulation dulls our ability to think critically and strategically. If I spend my time on a toxic social network — pardon the redundancy — I could be suffocating a reflection, an idea I need to write down, a venture I’m trying to build — whether it prospers or not — and so on. It’s no surprise that people say the best ideas are born while walking (I think it was Nietzsche).

The issue of boredom goes beyond our individual lives. It has a dimension that makes me think, with a mix of sorrow and shame, about the world. Latin America, a region I study and my birthplace, is sadly "entertaining.” So many unacceptable things happen that little by little they become part of the canon of normality. How important it is — for one’s mental peace — to live in a boring country, one where violence is the exception, where things work, and where scandals aren’t so overwhelming that the unacceptable stops shocking anyone. But countries that are “boring” in that sense are becoming a thing of the past.

With so much entertainment, we can guess the ending. That some governments around the world seem like coordinated schemes to commit crimes, that homicide rates keep rising every year, that we must tacitly accept corruption “because it greases the system,” that we have to put up with the disrespectful noise of one or many neighbors… all of this occurs in a context where society doesn’t allow a mind to sit, think, contemplate, or plan. And I believe that if we want to carry out a personal project — or an entire economy — it’s essential to get bored and find the answers that only silence and reflection can bring.

My advice, now that the year is drawing to a close, dear readers, is this: try to get bored, at least for a moment. And if you don’t find it feasible, at least allow others to do so.

Original column in Spanish from Revista Semana: "The importance of getting bored"