The very bored lady

We walked through the Bellingrath Gardens and had lunch in their cafeteria.  One end of the dining area is a glass wall with glass doors, looking out on a sunny patio with a table and view of the gardens.  A little too buggy and sunny for a pair of northerners but very pleasant to look at while lunching - a bit different from the typical dining room decor, too.

Lynn invited a woman who was looking for a place to join us at our table.  We started talking to her and she said that she was down from a neighboring state so that her husband could have a chance to play golf but she didn't play and was struggling with serious boredom.

When considering boredom, any combination of these might matter:

• money - what opportunities, travel, trips, equipment, foods, can I afford?
• physical strength - am I up to travel, shopping, standing, walking, etc.?
• meditation - using this tool daily can improve one's ability to tease apart strands in the ties that bore
• prayer - praying for new ears, new eyes, new thoughts, new appreciations, renewed appreciation of what one has
• helping others - there are many others one could help by cooking, listening, writing, supporting, advising
• caught in conceptions - am I being too eager to label events as boring?  Am I getting into the spirit of activities or trying to prove that I can remain bored by it all?
• patience, acceptance, tolerance - sitting quietly and soaking up the boredom with patience can help as can purposely avoiding usual pastimes for a short time to refresh my interest
• fiction can enliven one's life as well as content such as Toohey's "Boredom: A Lively History"

Rocks laying among branches and dead leaves seem very accepting and well-adjusted to their environment.  As I become more accepting of my life and body, fewer things strike me as exciting or thrilling.  Does that mean that being totally well-adjusted equals being inert, impassive, stone-like?

What if boredom gave us deep pleasure?  What if we vigorously sought deep boredom? I wrote about Mr. and Mrs. Donnybrook whose strange case was invented and described by Ogden Nash.  These two "scoured the Five Continents and the Seven Seas in their mad pursuit of boredom".  We usually hear about people with money and some vigor madly seeking pleasure, not boredom.  That old reliable Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament tells a tale we hear about: trying out every pleasure we can think of, only to find that they all lose their lift and drift us into a state of boredom.  But what if we try over and over to dig deep into boredom?  Will we drift into excitement?  Would boredom become uninhabitable?

Lucretius wrote of wealthy Romans in ancient times who ordered their servant to hitch up a chariot and drive them to their country estate, only to tell them to return them to the city after an hour in the country.  Flaubert wrote of Madame Bovary seeking excitement in extra-marital affairs, only to quickly find each new lover very boring. It's even a problem for caged animals.

Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety