Boredom = Self-injury
Boredom is a shameful enterprise because you allow yourself to waste your time introspectively bemoaning that you're not being entertained. Time that will not come back. Time better spent seeking anything other than languishing in place, neither growing nor adventuring. If you're bored, shame on you. You are much too careless with your sense of self-worth, casually dismissing your importance--to others, to your ambitions, or even to just yourself. You have a raison d'être. Don't not notice that.
I used to fill every moment of every hour with something, doing everything, anything in a desperate attempt to appease my anxious mind, thoughts and moments were constantly filled with podcasts and audiobooks or trying to learn a new language or skill. I would mindlessly and endlessly consume and move and do whatever I could to justify my existence as if I wasn't ever enough. My mind never really had a moment to itself; I was constantly miserable and burnt out. I hated being alone with my thoughts because what would they say, how would they berate me. How would I compare; the shame and inadequacy I always felt linger in my bones forced me to keep moving even though I was exhausted, still am, but I'm recovering, slowly and almost tediously.
Boredom, as I've come to realize, is a remedy for the malady of the heart and mind. It's an opportunity for exploration, creativity, and practicing self-compassion. Our minds require moments of boredom, a break from reality and the everyday noise to process the millions if not billions of bits of information we're constantly taking in. It's the quiet moments of silence and nothingness that our brains are busy doing their miraculous things. It's okay to be bored, it's not a punishment nor is it suffering but a small reprieve to allow yourself to breathe, relax and enjoy the calm that comes with it.
Suffering a sufferance
Internally boredom must feel like a punishment
externally an ennui looks so much like self abuse
Boredom, you do it to yourself and then in ignorance perceive
that slight to you is done. You are somehow set upon
by an unseen forces, chastising notion of unknown possibilities
in walled universes of unmet outcome.
On tip toes voyeurism tugs the ear and pulls the eye
to spy activity in every locality save within.
The neighbour topless bathing on a hedge-less lawn
so immaculate it is itself a boredom
Tedium irks the conscious.
Bile churns stomach juices to an ach
that makes inert pain more acute,
a doing you to self inflict.
In self quarrel a mirrors phantoms hurl admonishment
for all of the undone doings that uncouple from possibility.
Guilt and shame collude and conspire
you perceive a pillaging stripping away interests attachment
faceless tormentors ringless digits notes the loneliness
ones predicament encourages.
Absent occupation and distraction raise circumstance
of not knowing what to do like adolescent hormones
not knowing which chaos to calm.
Hope for bitter pages when a cover appears sweet
dissatisfaction is an empty meal that bloats you.
as boredom is a bloated you that is empty.
Suffering, or sufferance of self loathing?
Bored and Suffering
The bored are the suffering. There is nothing to do as there is nothing that can be done. The world deals its cards and if your hand is unlucky you are left alone with nothing.
Boredom is its own suffering. It hitches itself to whatever else you may suffer from. It takes even the niches of struggles and turns it into something larger. There is nothing to do it cries. Your worries pile up but there is nothing you can do. You are helpless to being unmotivated. Motivation fled when there was nothing for it to spend its time on.
The bored are the suffering, no matter what the extreme is. They can't find anything to do and are left only to reminisce on what they could have done.