Boredom is not just a word but a state of being. The condition is amplified by the world’s various forms of entertainment and by all the watching we do.
Intensity requires preparing ourselves inside, ready for action. Often, we peer at what is outside more passively.
Gawking, we are bored. Not much fun and not necessary.
Think television, radio, YouTube, theater, concerts, and attending sports contests. Computer games, too, but especially time in front of the desktop. Add sitting with your phone in your hand and your eyes riveted to the screen.
Yes, all these can provide excitement, but we often sit and see, and sit and respond, or sit and listen. Passivity leads to passivity.
I have been excited by those experiences and the venues I have listed. All can be wonderful, but a full basket of beheld events or sounds overheard can be an addictive trap without participation.
The weariness of working life, unless your job excites you and charges your mental batteries, makes the snare desirable. Too much routine back home pushes us in the same direction.
We move less than our ancestors. Their lives included walking, running, lifting, pushing, and climbing, not sitting and steering a car.
For most of human history, labor meant working under the sun, creating and using implements, and planting and harvesting crops like wheat and tomatoes.
Yes, alcohol, distracting and addicting, claimed many of our predecessors. Still, their entertainment involved dancing, playing card games, target practice, acting in community theater, drawing, writing letters, interacting within inches of another person, and playing sports.
People made music together in their homes. In Germany, friends and family joined for Hausmusik—music at home.
Kids still show the way to a life of intensity. They run like crazy, live for a ball game, tackle each other, dig in the mud, jump on a trampoline, push their siblings, and ride bikes. They build, with or without the encouragement of toys.
Youngsters are active, and their actions overflow with inner churning, demonstrable ups and downs, laughter, and tears. They act out the videos they see and pour imagination like sweet syrup onto everyday play.
One of my grad school professors, Lee Secrest, used to say, “Don’t dress up because the event is exceptional; you dress up to make it exceptional.”
Put another way, we can alter the emotions and skills sleeping inside of us, and change the way we experience life.
Kids won’t tell us, but there are times we would do well to become more like them. Artful teachers, too, can make learning exciting and fun. Intense in the most joyous way.
Children learn every day. Do we?
Somewhere, for many but not all of us, the passing days become a march without much delight.
Here’s something different if it fits the space of your life and your needs.
- Test yourself. Do the things you have never tried or have given up. Sometimes this means school, with regular testing as a part of formal education.
- Perhaps it’s time for a career change.
- Try word games and unfamiliar expressions. Practice a speech and deliver it to yourself in the audience of your mirror. Record it, listen to it, and study the tempo, variation of soft and loud, humor, and how to build up to a climax.
- Terrified? Repeat. Watch, hear, and scrutinize commanding speakers on YouTube or TED Talks. Attempt it in front of a few people or a crowd.
- Consider joining Toastmasters International. It helps participants speak with confidence and wit.
- Memorize a favorite poem.
- Sing alone or in a group.
- Learn to play chess.
- Dance.
- Enjoy sex with someone you love and with whom you are in love.
- As you walk along a peopled street, spend time moving your eyes away from your phone. Survey your fellow men and women with care. How are they dressed? What is their mood?
- One of the faces might be a future lover if you act in the moment. Another might be a waiting soul hoping for someone’s hello.
- Notice the clouds overhead and, one hopes, the deep blue in the sky. If the sky is gray, travel elsewhere to find the color of yesteryear.
- Bathe in the architectural differences of buildings, recent and old, and find the beauty and graceful lines in the best of them. Seek the trees, birds, and flowers.
- Plant something and make it beautiful and lasting.
- Visit an unfamiliar neighborhood, museum, part of your country, or another land.
- Read books you don’t tend to choose. Better to pore over the classics before 65, the age at which their old world became new to me.
- Swim.
- If you suffer from skin hunger, purchase a pet. Dogs want to be touched and love to lick. We return the favor except for the licking. At least, I hope so.
- Again, do what is hard, scary, risky, challenging, in small steps or leviathan leaps. A Stoic philosopher offered this observation:
I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you. — Seneca, On Providence.
Do you view life as a performance and fear the crowd’s judgment? Then consider this. Most forget your miscues within hours or days. They are busy thinking about their own lives, not so much about yours.
Regarding tests, the oral exams of a graduate education might be more amusing than you think.
Laughter isn’t typical, I admit. Rather, it can be a grueling process of grilling questions by three professors who evaluate you and your written work, offer possible criticisms, and demand major changes to your thesis.
Oral exams tend to generate much anxiety in the examinee, and I was no exception to this.
The examining committee first meets by themselves, then calls you into the room to join them. After exchanging greetings, the chairman (your advisor) opens the gathering to queries from the other participants.
And so eyes turned to Dr. Philip Brickman, who asked me the first question in my defense of my Master’s Thesis:
There is a very serious problem with this thesis.
Dead silence ensued. My anxiety level went up 400%. I began to imagine my future taking a wrong turn into three lanes of oncoming traffic.
Then, after a pause that lasted for ages, Dr. Brickman pointed to the Acknowledgments section of the thesis and said:
Philip is spelled with one “L.”
I had spelled his name Phillip, with two Ls. The memory of what happened next is gone, except for the relief.
Soon, I received a Master’s Degree, and later a Ph.D., after another oral exam.
Think of this as one item out of your own catalog of difficult moments—a leap you believe is beyond your talent. You anticipate an Olympic high-hurdle competition.
Reality is different. Once you are over and past the barriers, they shrink.
The hard stuff now in front of you gets easier. Looking back, if the event required courage, you recognize a change in who you are.
You have enlarged yourself within yourself. A life of wider possibility awaits.
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Disney World, the work of KlipschFan, is the top photo. Next is Haus der Musik Vienna, Austria, which is attributed to Joseolgon. Finally, In the Box by Mary Cassatt, 1879. The first two are sourced from Wikimedia Commons, the last from Wikiart.org/
Your wonderful suggestions have a common thread: engaging with the real world, noticing, and trying new things. Spending time with children can keep one from becoming jaded and dull. Children help you see the world through new eyes. Most essential, children help us rediscover the powerful state of awe. “It takes a very long time to become young.” ― Pablo Picasso
I am grateful for you words. Evelyn. Thanks for your appreciation of the role of children. Beautifully expressed. The Picasso quote is new to me. Thank you for that, as well.
Keeping our minds and bodies active is one of the keys to happiness. It’s no accident that obesity has become a much bigger problem in our society since people aren’t as active as they used to be. I have many fond memories of childhood. During the summer, we were playing outside all the time.
Thanks, Pete. Yes, I, too, was outside all the time as a kid. Back then, kids who were overweight were rare, but ridiculed. To some degree, weight held them back from a good launch into their future. A shame then, and now.
This made me smile this morning, Dr. Stein:
From Lee Secrest – “Don’t dress up because the event is exceptional; you dress up to make it exceptional.”
I love that simple nudge. Attitude does, indeed, matter. And your post is the second one this week that made me think about the French word, “ennui” and the importance of yanking ourselves into experiences when they don’t appear at our feet. Be in the world, be active, be a helper. But most of all be present. Love this morning message today. Thank you! 💝
Thanks, Vicki, and a special thanks for reminding me of the little French than I know, “ennui.” We must work harder to overcome it, with so many draining experiences and siren calls to attend to events that discourage life giving activity. You put it all very well, as usual.
I love the notion of living with intensity and the way you delivered the message, Gerald. Consider me duly inspired to live each day with amplitude! Speaking of… I am sending this from Budapest where, just yesterday, I added one more face and one more voice to the mass gathering at the Hungarian Parliament to celebrate some long overdue regime change and reason for hope. It was quite the moving experience. What a privilege to have been there. Thanks & Peace.
Thank you, Frank. Wonderful that you got to experience the celebration.
My dad was in the army during WWII and got to attend the first Paris Bastille Day celebration after VE Day — July 14, 1945.
You have lived through a historic day, Frank. Glad you made the chance.
Amazing message on this Sunday, Dr. Stein. Life truly is so much more fun and enjoyabe when we’re fully engaged!
Here, hear! Thank you, Erin. Mother’s day is coming for you before long!
Dr. Stein, I love your suggestions of new experiences to spark new life into our old ways of being. I continue to challenge myself in as many ways as I can to keep my aging brain and body running.
From my vantage point, you do very well in giving yourself a vibrant and interesting life, Rosaliene. You could be a model. Thank you.
Thanks for your kind comment, Dr. Stein. The model part is a different story 😀
One thing I have noticed: when we seek to take, or to receive an experience, we tend to be passive, for it happens to us and around us, but when we seek to give, our experiences have even more flavor, for we are actively participating.
While I love creating art and making pottery as it is a very meditative experience for me, the act of giving a workshop or teaching an art student new skills bring me great joy. sharing our skills and knowledge with others is a way off connecting with others and knowing we’re contributing to their joy and life education.
You remain and ever wise woman, Tamara. I do think there is the possibility of a quiet, absolutely focused, intensity when working on a project, though there might be individual differences, of course. Clearly, as you point out, connecting with others in a workshop, generates stimulation and, if it goes well, the joy you describe. Thanks again.
“Put another way, we can alter the emotions and skills sleeping inside of us, and change the way we experience life.” – Wonderful suggestions throughout, Dr. Stein, and for me your thoughts above- the image of emotions and skills sleeping inside of us- was so vivid. Thank you!
Thank you, Lori. As I reflect on life, I imagine we carry with us this remarkable and sometimes unmanageable thing called character. It is a thing we don’t always know how to change and whether we have the focus to figure this out. It can master us.
I’d like to believe that we can make something of it, take it, build it, and recreate it. When I see my seven year old work with LEGOs, I can imagine what a force he may be in the world of the future. He bursts with confidence.
Most of us have more of that force and those possibilities than we know what to do with –how to throw ourselves into the world to shape it.
I have the feeling you hold something special. As Studs Terkel used to say on his radio program, “Take it easy, but take it.” Be well, Lori.
Jumping out of an airplane was definitely one of the most intense moments of my life. These days, simply exploring an unfamiliar part of the country is plenty of excitement for me.
I road some high rides and climbed some rope, but never made the jump you did, Edward. Very happy you were ahead of me in that line of experience! Thanks for your service and your courage.
You’re very welcome, Dr. Stein. Thank you.