Do Less
Time spent in awareness is never time wasted. Boredom is the idea that I should be doing something. I need to be doing more, being productive, producing something. There is an internal battle that has been waged. Society has programmed us to believe that we need to be doing more, that we should be ambitious in our careers, that we need to be productive to have value. Mindfulness is teaching me that this is false. There is no inherent value in anything, and yet, there is immutable value in everything. This is a contradiction I struggle with.
Even writing this, I find myself struggling with the idea about the reason I’m writing it. What is the purpose? What is the goal? What do I want to come from this? It’s as if my brain is not in the act of writing this at all, but rather somewhere in the future planning the next thing. This is a kind of auto-pilot; my brain engages in future predicting all by itself. I don’t have to do anything but take up a task and my brain will graciously begin the process of expectation and prediction. And then, as if the prediction were real, I start to believe that there are stakes involved and I will suffer when it doesn’t turn out the way I want. But it was all made up by me to avoid boredom, loneliness, idling away time that could be better spent accomplishing something.
I struggle with boredom. This is something I’ve always struggled with. I don’t like a day with nothing planned, with nothing to do. I feel like I need to read a book, or write something, or log in to Duolingo and learn more Spanish. I don’t necessarily want or need to do any of those things, or anything at all for that matter, but the pressure to act, to do something becomes this loud voice of failure echoing through me.
What eventually happens is that I force myself to engage in activities that I don’t want to do, and my frustration level rises. I find reading to be a chore; I find my writing to be tedious or uninspired. Because of course it is. I’ll take a walk, with the intention of preoccupying my mind. The beauty of the moment is lost in the haze of countless “shoulds.”
No matter how skilled at mindfulness I become, which is not very, I still seek to alleviate the boredom of “ordinary” moments. I look around me, and I can find so much evidence that I should be doing more: books, podcasts, motivational websites, all telling us to fill our time with ways to become successful, to keep ourselves busy. “Follow your dreams, do whatever it takes, never give up. Don’t wait, start today.” We are programmed to believe that downtime is an opportunity for more.
And then I had a radical idea. Pause. Breathe. Exist in the idea that this is enough. This moment is all I need. Maybe downtime is the natural state of existence. I’ve decided while I struggle to accept this, I want to let my voice be an alternative. I truly believe that this moment is enough, and I want to practice embodying it. What does it look like to be content with what is? Equanimity is my new favorite word, to learn to expect nothing from anything that is out of my control, to be grateful for the awareness of existence. To face any and all situations with the same openness, because what is happening is the thing that’s happening, no amount of stressing or wishful thinking will change it. It is the moment. It is what I have right now, and it is enough. Socrates said, “He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” So what does it look like to actually embrace the boredom? What does it look like to take action steps away from action and closer to the natural repose that all animals, humans included, should be in when their needs are met?
I teach storytelling, as a playwright, and it’s incredible to consider how even our cultural collective imaginations rely entirely on the wants of a character. For a story to successfully engage an audience, a character must want or need something that they are unable to get outright, and so they must try different tactics in order to be successful in achieving this want. In most stories, there is no time for pausing, for reflection, for integrating, for the mistakes of an endeavor to settle into wisdom.
This is what being human affords us. The more we live, in theory, the more wisdom we have access to. And yet, entrenched in expectations of success, of action, of doing as much as we can to “evolve” or “improve” ourselves, we are suffering from ailments that we do not notice. We’re not in our bodies; we’re lost in our heads, in the versions of ourselves we’re convinced we’ll be someday, or the regret of the people we’ve become. We seek distraction to alleviate the suffering of lost expectations or of defeat. We all want to be the focus of something bigger than us. We’ve lost the awareness that with every breath we take, we are exactly that. We are participants in a consciousness that is fascinating and rare and beautiful. And all the scope of human emotions from joy to sorrow, love, fear, pain and boredom are equally valid human states, none deserving more attention than the other. They are not situations to cling to or seek to evade, but rather to fully experience for what they are.
There is a voice inside of me telling me that I’m trying to use this idea as an excuse to be lazy. I’m using this idea of pausing, of sitting in contemplation, of letting go of the pressure of “I should,” and being grateful for the existence of “I am.” I notice the thoughts pressuring me to reject this, and I am grateful that I am aware of them. They are survival skills that I have needed in the past, but that I do not need now. So, I honor their presence, but I do not follow them. I sit with them. I pause inside of them. And just like everything else they retreat to make room for the next moment and the next.
I don’t know yet what this fully means, but I do know that I will no longer engage in any activity that I feel I must do in order to feel content. I will no longer fill my days, hours, minutes with the belief that I’m not doing enough. I will satisfy my needs. I will remain aware of the boredom of ordinary moments as an awareness of existence, of this beautiful, incredible, odds-defying existence that I am exceedingly lucky to be a part of.
