humdrum

Maria Popova from Brain-Pickings has crafted another brilliant and consciousness-expanding on the formative and soulful importance of boredom. This is simple boredom being addressed here, restlessness and not ennui, world-weariness, which Oscar Wilde quipped as the one unforgivable sin.
The essay examines the nature of being bored through the lens of various writers and disciplines, showing how it is disdained as childish thing, something to be beaten back post-haste with one’s full quiver of distractions and shiny-objects and something that one ought to out-grow as soon as possible. Not a disheveling feeling that necessarily matures into quiet meditation or offers more than a vague sense of irritation of not knowing precisely what one wants, expects or can look forward to, boredom is nonetheless developmentally critical and something that ought to be cultivated—and not repelled, especially in children though that irritability that comes of unsure footing can quickly escalate. Boredom is essentially attention untethered, and when indulged, it allows care and courtesy to bob along until it can leash itself to something new and novel—in new and novel ways. The full article is an inspired and rewarding read, and makes one pause to think about how quickly one reaches for any number of pacifiers when made to queue-up.