Like most of us, I keep pretty busy. Since the death of my wife of 50 years a year ago, keeping busy has provided some sense of purpose as I work through project after project.
I’ve transformed the garden space around the condo I live in. I’ve kept up with the laundry, cooking, the dishes and paying the bills. I regularly get together with a small circle of friends or family, and a monthly meeting of the local Planning Commission eats up an entire evening. Book club takes up an hour and half every six weeks or so, as does reading whatever book that’s been chosen. My yoga and meditation practices consume an hour or more each day, and combined with writing for and managing the business of the Sonoma Valley Sun newspaper means by the end of the day, I’m ready for bed. As I’ve previously noted, I also have befriended sadness, so my emotional life takes up space too. I’m generally not the type that gets bored easily, but it happens. When it does, I watch my mind.
Mind watching mind is an interesting way to spend some time. Like a movie that runs continuously, my days are an amalgam of thoughts, feelings, and activities that don’t require observation to happen. Like everyone, from time to time, I think about what I have to do and make a plan, but generally I just “go about my business,” one moment leading to another. Now I’m hungry, now I’m lonely, now I need to take my garbage cans to the curb. You know what it’s like. Spiritual advisor Baba Ram Dass sagely advised “Be Here Now” but what’s the alternative? There is none. He was, I think, talking about attention and how we direct it.
How do you feel about boredom? I decided that if I do get bored, I won’t try to escape it; instead, I watch it. Funny how watching boredom makes it interesting; after all, what is boredom but dissatisfaction in the moment. An uncomfortable absence of stimulation or entertainment, a space of time unfilled with activity that feels wanting; such moments underly boredom. Is watching my boredom a way of avoiding it? It’s yet another question my mind can examine.
Boredom is an emotion, and like all emotions, it comes and goes. When it comes, I don’t welcome it, but I don’t reject it either. Boredom is a sign, an indicator about the truth of being human that while uncomfortable, is real. The narratives I spin and sustain, my sense of identity about who and what I am, are the play of consciousness. The whole human endeavor is built upon collective narratives that are passed on from one generation to the next. No wonder we sing “Life is but a Dream.”
Speaking of dreams, one of my recurrent dreams is about losing track of my baggage. We all carry baggage; the family baggage of our childhoods, parents, their parents, and theirs. In my dreams, I’ve lost my baggage and then get anxious looking for it. I think such dreams are another expression of mind watching mind, a subconscious effort to examine the root of what makes me tick and bring it to my attention.
Interestingly, I never experience boredom while I dream. Now that’s worth watching.
Be First to Comment