Meaningful Returns

Black holes got some decent amount of popular press back in February, due to the fact that the universe is amazing and math is awesome. I asked my friend Jack, who is a physicist and much smarter than me, to give me a layman’s description of a black hole. He said a black hole is “A region of space (really spacetime) that is so greatly warped that extreme gravitational effects prevent anything that enters this region from later exiting.”

That’s what Boredom is. Extremely warped. It causes us to disengage from reality, leading us to spend frightening quantities of time and money pursuing none of the things that make us feel most whole. Time and money that we’ll never get back, by the way.

Boredom is just a symptom of fear. Fear of silence, fear of the unknown, fear of beginning, fear of taking the next step, fear of others. So we check Instagram for the 26th time, we watch the next hour of Netflix, we keep up with the Joneses and their cars and homes–all so we don’t have to deal with the fear of engaging.

When we let Boredom have its way, we’re saying to ourselves and the people around us, “What makes you really tick, what gets your blood pumping, what makes you better–it’s too hard. I’d rather not.”

But you know what? Boredom can go away. You can make it leave, by being curious. By asking Why? By exploring books and brooks. By ruthlessly getting rid of clutter, things and commitments alike. By learning to cook. By deleting apps. By noticing.