Boredom - Dec 17 2024

 

Boredom

Dec 17 2023



If it's a sin to be bored

then I must look iniquitous.

Boredom.

When you're either filling time

or killing it,

impatiently waiting

for the next big thing

to come rescue you.

Guilty of wasting

not only time

but potential.

In my teens

I affected world-weariness,

and would have been please to know

how bored I looked.

After all, it was cool

to be jaded and detached.

As a young adult

life couldn't come soon enough;

I felt trapped

in the margin of things

before real life began.

But now

at an age I’d rather not mention

my small world

has gotten smaller;

interests pared down

to what I truly enjoy,

focus contracting

in on itself.

So am I living well

or still adrift,

existing

as if I have forever to live?

Is the simple day-to-day

a full enough life

or the path of least resistance?

A busy person

who never has time to be bored

would sniff and raise his nose,

judging me

for my drift.

Yet this fallow state

when the mind is free to wander

and the eye closely observe

is worth much more

than mere busyness.

A chance to pay attention

with all your senses

to what was always there,

the small things

that hide in plain sight.

To think deeply

about whatever comes to mind.

So I watch the rivulets

zigzagging down the glass

against the setting sun.

Think about regrets

and the power of forgiveness.

And looking into the soft brown eyes

of my beloved dog

wonder what it's like in there.

I have found

it's fine to be bored.

That we all could use more of it.

That you may think me absent

yet I’m fully here;

mindful

creative

engaged.

That time, whether slow or fast

doesn't matter all that much.

Because now is all there is.

Because open-ended time

frees the mind to wander.

And because saving time

isn't like banking it;

there's no getting it back in the end.

(This poem is being posted out of chronological order because it was lost for most of the year, and only recently recovered.)