Intro to boredom

In Part 49 we begun looking at indifference, exhaustion, frustration and boredom (Part 50) as common reactions to the wars being waged by the lust of the flesh, the pride of life and by the lust of the eyes against our body, mind and soul.

We’ve spent Part 50-55 talking deeper about exhaustion and its remedy, rest (as exercised through sleep and leisure).

Another common reaction to the unending struggle against all those same forces that constantly drag us down towards the ground, against the internal inclinations and external factors that slow us down and cause us to lower our standards and drop our manly ambitions is boredom.  This boredom, is closely related to exhaustion.

Exhaustion happens when your physical, emotional, mental or spiritual energies or resources are severely depleted.  Boredom happens when your physical, intellectual and spiritual powers are effectively underemployed.  If I were to spend an hour explaining nursery mathematics to you, you would be bored. Why?  Because those sums do not challenge you at all; they don’t sufficiently engage your grown intellectual powers.  Boredom in leisure or entertainment, in sports or in tizi, or even in learning happens for the same reason: when you are not sufficiently challenged; when your physical, intellectual and spiritual powers are underemployed.

This is precisely the link to exhaustion: one moderated remedy to exhaustion is passive leisure.  Passive leisure invests no effort: it does not engage the body, the mind, or the soul. This last phrase should already sound very familiar to you!  This should already sound a lot like boredom!

To see the connection, have a look at what one recent author would say on this point: “You're bored? That's because you keep your senses awake and your soul asleep.”

Senses awake.  Soul asleep.  Stimulation that does not involve the (mind or the) soul.  Exciting, but shallow (entertainment, for example).  You don’t grow from it.  It’s like fireworks: spectacular for a brief moment, but leave no useful light behind like a simple candle or torch.  It is effectively useless.

Short self-evaluation 56

  1. If I’m to be brutally sincere about it, how much of my entertainment leads me to boredom?  What specific activities lead me to true boredom?  (If you can go as far as naming the series, program, show, etc. the better.)
  2. Because none of these grow me in body, mind or soul, can I safely conclude then that these bits of entertainment are no more than a total waste of my time-resource?

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