On Boredom
It wasn’t until last year that I experienced boredom in my experiment. Previously, I had spent all my time studying every single human design lecture I could get my hands on. Until my curiosity ran out.
I tend to go through obsessions. Obsessions that run very deep and consume all my thoughts and waking hours. The obsession with human design began in 2020, but didn’t take hold until 2021. It was the perfect thing to keep my mind occupied during lockdown.
But I burnt myself out. I was listening to and reading hours worth of lectures everyday. And whilst I don’t regret it, even though I definitely went too far and could have paced myself at an adequate speed (thank you undefined ajna and head for your voracious need to be certain and think about things that don’t matter), it eventually lost it’s fun. It became boring. I had binged and gorged on information until there came a moment where I was like, “okay, I’m done here”.
That didn’t mean I was done with human design. I am still, very much invested in my own experiment, for better or worse. It has ruined my life. Lol. I don’t say that lightly.
But studying itself? Trying so hard to become (or appear as) an expert on the system? There was no more appeal. Heck, my mind so desperately wanted to be a “human design reader” — even when I adamantly denied this on the internet — that I felt like a piece of my identity shattered. God, so now what, if I don’t spend my time talking about or studying human design all day, what the heck am I supposed to do with myself?
Cue: pain-staking, agonising, eyeball melting, get-me-out-my-skin, incessant boredom.
Boredom, I am quite aware, is a luxury to experience at all. Boredom denotes you have enough time in your life to momentarily have lapses of space where there is nothing you need to be doing. This is not something which is not afforded to most people, with jobs to show up for, bills to pay, errands to run, children to look after, a life to maintain and keep afloat in order to survive. It is an immense privilege to be bored, despite how irritating it is for my mind to endure.
According to my mother, I had a “low frustration tolerance” as a kid coupled with an incredibly dire capacity to deal with boredom. I could not stand being bored with having nothing to do. Hence, I made sure to avoid it at all costs by filling my time as much as possible with sport, afternoon activities, and eventually a job, which I hated and cried before every shift, but at least I wasn’t bored.
So I never really learnt how to accept boredom. I wonder if this is an undefined sacral thing, because I watch my Projector grandmother who is nearly 92 and still fills her day up to the brim with activities and social events and would never leave an inch of time to possibly be bored.
I was watching someone’s stories a few weeks back on IG who exclaimed they never get bored anymore since finding human design.
Well good for you. I am profusely, fucking jealous.
Theoretically, none of us should ever be bored. We have more access to various means of entertainment than ever before, an infinite doom-scroll worth of content we could fill every second of the day distracting ourselves with.
But it’s not enough. Even with so much content we could drown in it forever, it still feels, kind of lack-lustre and very, meh. I think we’re all content fatigued. Yet, what else is there to do or use as a distraction? (okay, many things but let’s ignore this for now.) The counter is lay staring at the ceiling wishing you had something to do, anything to do, to escape the emptiness of… nothing. The black hole, the gaping void, where nothing seems to exist.
Side note: I wonder if we had a higher capacity to deal with boredom in the past, pre-saturation of the internet. I’ve been obsessed with the nineties over the last several months, and it seems to be this distinct era where boredom was more or less accepted as just a part of life, sitting around having nothing to do, passing the time through mindlessly flicking through TV channels (which arguably, is no different to scrolling through TikToks). Time felt slower in the past without constant connectivity; there was more space for doing “nothing”. But if it is still possible to experience boredom today, with a near permanent status of being online, then boredom must be a natural part of human existence, and will continue to be around forever.
The Waiting Game
I talk about waiting a lot. I rave about it, give it stellar five star reviews, and recommend it to everybody. But you know, it’s not all fun or glamorous. Waiting can be excruciatingly boring.
Most of us were never taught how to wait. If there are shortcuts, we take them. If there is a faster route, it’s obviously the preferred way to go. Everything in society conditions us towards instant gratification: the dopamine hit we get from posting on social media, get-rich-quick schemes based on manifestation self-help books, fast food available in five minutes, Amazon one-click purchases and delivery the same day. Everything needs to be happening now, and if it’s not, it should’ve happened yesterday.
We then apply this concept to our personal lives. Waiting seems to be death of progress. And what is a human being, but a constant drive and desire for progressing towards our conditioned goals? It seems waiting runs counter-intuitive to achieving anything.
You’re right. Waiting does run opposite to achieving anything, because the realisation dawns on you that there is nothing you need to “try” to achieve. Nothing else to do except exist. No more running or chasing after grand future plans and mental fantasies of "success". Oh the mind may still be caught up in all of it, but it is rendered practically useless thanks to strategy and authority. It's on the body's timeline now.
Things do happen, believe it or not, in this container of waiting. Things happen with such ease and little resistance that it feels like you are not doing any of it at all (hint: you’re not).
Boredom as the natural state of waking up
Most would want to escape this eternal limbo of waiting. Instead of leaning into the waiting game further and staring the void directly in the face, it is much easier to come up with an action plan on how to get out of it. Doing something is always better than doing nothing. God forbid you’re left behind in this world.
And that is exactly where your mind keeps you trapped: thinking you must do something to get out of the state you’re currently experiencing. Thinking you have to keep up with everybody else in the unspoken race you’ve been thrown into. Stuck in the illusion that you’re in charge of it all, the timing, the what, who, and when of making things happen. Never, ever, feeling like there’s a stop button, that you can simply, walk away.
Learning how to wait has taught me how to withstand elongated spaces of boredom. Because I thoroughly believe that boredom is the natural state of waking up.
What happens when you no longer care about all the things you have been taught to care about? You no longer care about making more money, achieving big milestones, searching for love, buying this or that, desiring power, receiving recognition or even basic respect from your peers or family. It all just becomes meaningless. But this is the driver and engine of what keeps us going in life.
So you are left with this huge expansion of time to kill, completely alone, kicking rocks across this barren wasteland, hoping you can find something to do with yourself. Over the last several months, I have woken up many times in a huff of annoyance because I simply don’t know what to do anymore. I feel vexed.
And in the same vein, I feel completely and utterly free. Boredom, for all the misery it can be on the mental plane, is the potential birthplace of creativity. Because eventually, the body moves. Eventually, something does happen. It is a universal law that life is movement, and so even as you sit on your ass and do absolutely jack shit, things will change, sooner or later.
Maybe this is it
Maybe my life has come to this: going for walks, listening to music, watching netflix, occasionally writing, intermittent socialising, and the random events that happen in between. Maybe my life is going to be simple and mundane, and maybe that will be enough.
It is normal to experience lulls in “life happening” that can last several weeks or several years. Because in the end, it doesn’t really matter if “life is happening” or “life isn’t happening” — it’s all just this and that, a way for the mind to measure.
Boredom is a gift that teaches us how to present. It teaches us how to be surrendered to the moment as it’s happening, to life as it is, without needing to fix it or escape it’s embrace. If you can learn how to wait and accept how to be bored, then you quite literally have the most important tools you will ever need.
And boredom, like melancholy, like the emotional wave, fluctuates. It comes and goes. Perhaps there will be a time in my future where I am busy again and won’t experience boredom at all (although it’s hard to imagine it currently). But until then, I’m just going to have to ride the waves, the beauty, the ugly, the high points and the low points, and of course, the times when there’s no waves at all. The stillness is peaceful.
Even if I’m terribly fucking bored.
In the process of writing this article, my experience has mutated because now I CAN imagine a life without boredom. Suddenly, I had an influx of creativity and inspiration, ways to spend my time which excite me. And perhaps, the boredom will return full throttle at some point. Or, it is a necessary phase of the experiment to pass through, eventually making way for the next — inspiration. Either way, know this — if you are bored out of your brains right now, the moment will pass. The time will come when things will change. And in the meantime, recognise how boredom is a valuable teacher in how to be patient, in how to wait for what is absolutely right for you according to your authority. There is nothing else to do until then.