Volume CXXXIII, Number 8 November 2, 2001 f

Boredom, the MTV generation without stimulus
GENEVIVE CREEDON
STAFF WRITER

At nine o'clock last Friday night, I was reading at my desk, when a friend came in. "You're working?" I replied that I was just reading for pleasure. "Oh, come on. Stop reading. Go out and get drunk or something…"

When I was alone again, I couldn't help but be relieved that I was going to share the rest of the night with my book, and I'd take a book, even a bad book, over getting drunk any day. Some people might wonder what is wrong with me. I have been asked the question a few too many times.

I will continue, however, to contend that I am completely normal, as far as normalcy goes. Other people's drugs might be alcohol, cigarettes, tranquilizers; mine are far simpler (and less expensive). I sit quietly in a chair; I watch the wind pick up fallen leaves and throw them in flight. I read, even when I've been reading all day for classes. My idea of pleasure means that I get told every so often that I should "loosen up" and "have fun," which have always seemed like strange comments.

Perhaps no one watches me when I read. Probably, one would get bored at just watching, but I can say that I'm pretty loose when I allow myself to indulge in a quiet moment with a good book. What better remedy to the aches and pains of daily life, than traveling a million miles away, without even having to take a step?

Some will say that it's wonderful for me that I love to read, but what about those people who don't like reading? Well, I could argue that those people just aren't trying hard enough to find reading they like, but I will grant the opposition that perhaps there are people who simply don't like to read.

My point is not to convert everyone to reading, far from it. It seems, however, that our generation has become so used to seeking entertainment that it has forgotten that uneventful moments aren't innately boring. It takes much more of an effort to be bored than it does to be completely fulfilled with enjoying the simplicity of an eventless time.

I am always amazed when I hear some one say the words "I'm bored." It seems to me that being bored is a state only boring people can experience. As a generation, we have done a pretty good job at becoming boring, because we expect everything around us to be interesting: television, concerts, parties… And when we are left without some object to grab our attention, we don't know what to do with ourselves. We're bored.

We have sold our creative abilities of filling our time with meaningful experiences, in order to acquire entertainment. The buyers, of course, have, over the years, decided that they can make more and more money by stuffing us with this entertainment, and the result is a silently tragic state of affairs.
We're boring. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but when was the last time you sat in a chair, completely satisfied to just sit there? Even if you have done it recently enough to remember it, how long did it last? How long did it take you to get up, saying you were going to do something?

Do something productive, because sitting quietly is less productive than going out and getting drunk? That's not to say that we shouldn't have fun. We have to have fun, but perhaps we ought to reevaluate what it is we call wasting time.

What can be the use of spending a Friday night with friends if you don't remember anything about that time the next morning? The moments we spend doing what is now considered "nothing" are priceless, not because they don't arise very often, but because we rarely take the initiative to see them for what they are, offerings of sanity in an insane world.