The Bite of Boredom

Boredom is in hot pursuit of modern man in wealthy societies. With the advancement of technology, he no longer needs to worry about things like staying fed, warm, cool, clothed, or protected. Not having to spend time or expend energy on attaining food or shelter, he has created for himself an excess of ‘spare’ time; and it is in this surplus of newly-found time that boredom often rears its awful head.

This concept of boredom, a perception of not having anything to do, seems to have been foreign to most civilizations who, in former times, immediately faced the repercussions of how they spent their time. If they did not exert themselves to gather resources for the following day, they would quickly find themselves in an unforgiving world.

But it is not so with us. Our societies have now been built so as to remove us one step further from concern of our imminent survival. Public utilities such as water, electricity, and gas enable us to get what we want with a rapidity that allows us time for leisure. What then do we do to prevent ourselves from being overtaken by the boredom of our leisure? Is this even a thing that we can prevent? Perhaps Voltaire was right: man is destined to live either "in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom."[1] Is there really a third option we can choose in order to escape from "this contagion, this leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of a Christianity in decay"?[2]

With these questions in mind, it seems wise to distinguish between not having anything eventful to do and not having anything worthwhile to do. Throughout human history men- including ourselves- have always had worthwhile things to do, it is just a matter of placing value on these things to judge them worth the while. Eventful or novel things, on the other hand, seem to be few and far between and it is unfortunate that we have esteemed them so highly in our day.

With what urgency and attention do we seek after thrills of one sort or another to the neglect of taking care of our minds, bodies, and souls? It has reached the point where taking care of these aspects of ourselves is tantamount to boredom itself for it holds no excitement for us. Reading, praying, grocery shopping, taking care of our property, going to work- these are not always on the top of the list of things we want to do and, often enough, the dullness inherent in them drives us to hire others to do them for us whenever possible.

If this then is truly the situation we find ourselves in by placing such emphasis on excitement, what sense are we to make of the Gospels that tell us next to nothing about the majority of our Lord's earthly life? Can we assume that nothing important was happening as He "increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man" (Lk 2:52) because nothing noteworthy caught the attention of the Evangelists to warrant writing about it? Are we to think that our Lord led a dull life due to the Gospels' lack of covering his years from age 12 to 30?

Indeed, what was Jesus’ life like before becoming a public figure, before the miracles, before all the attention given Him? What was it like even later on in between the mountaintop sermons and the miraculous wonders that are highlighted by the Evangelists’ pen? When the crowds left Him, how did He occupy His time simply being a man? Our Lord helping others to grow in wisdom makes sense to us, but what are we to make of it when Luke tells us He too was growing in wisdom, with no elaboration being given to the idea? How does God in the flesh spend His spare time so as to grow in wisdom? Perhaps a deeper understanding of the incarnation surfaces for us as we ponder this quiet, unwritten about time in our Lord's life- and, perhaps in contemplating this span of life which was of apparent minor significance, we might be able to understand our own lives more deeply as well.

As we search the headlines for eventful happenings in our lives, maybe the one great event in them is the collection of all our mundane, everyday experiences. The American playwright Thorton Wilder wrote in a preface to his play Our Town that "every person who has ever lived has lived an unbroken succession of unique occasions."[3] Does the Lord not also see it thus? Does He not see the entirety of our life as one precious thing He is has given us (with all its individual component parts included) rather than a segmented, ununified conglomeration of boring situations followed by some excitement, only to be followed up with more boredom? "With the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day"(2 Pt 3:8). Maybe the lack of constant novelty in the life of man is what makes him essentially human and, consequently, what a travesty it is we get bored in our rejection of this normalcy! In our fervent, insatiable search for novelty, diversion, and change we have lost touch of the value of stability, simplicity, and permanence.

In Christ becoming man, He indeed made holy the everyday life of all men. As He worked for His food and shelter, as He spent time in companionship with His fellow men, as He entered into solitude to encounter the Father in prayer, in all these things that the hopeless and despairing man thinks worthless, these Christ sanctified and made worthwhile as He increased in wisdom and years. As Bonhoeffer once said: "Christianity preaches the infinite worth of that which is seemingly worthless and the infinite worthlessness of that which is seemingly so valued."[4]

As we age, the temptation arises to examine the life that we have lived and see it highlighted by exciting or extraordinary events, much as a biographer would segment the life of his chosen subject by certain distinguishable milestones. Everything in between these noteworthy events seem to be nothing but a blurry dream in which we strenuously search to find some value. But to fail to see the eternal worth of that life ordinarily lived is to fail to comprehend the absence of any evangelical record of Christ's formative years or daily routine. He did not merely come to preach, suffer, and die- He came to live a fully human life of wisdom, knowledge, and love just as we are meant to do as His brethren; and not only to live it, but to do so abundantly (c.f. Jn 10:10).

Thus, it is good for us to imagine what those typical, regular, quotidian times of our Lord's life were like; but, could we not also imagine those very times being mirrored in the quiet simplicity of our own uneventful life lived well? "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God," (c.f. 1 Cor 10:31) for, in so doing, we imitate Christ Himself as He lived His blessed life here on earth- not in gnawing boredom- but in constant reverence for every given moment the Father lovingly provided. 

[1] Voltaire, Candide, trans. Henry Morley (New York, NY: Barnes & Noble Books, 2003), 127.

[2] Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, trans. Pamela Morris (New York, NY: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2002), 3.

[3] Thornton Wilder, Three Plays: Our Town, The Skin of Our Teeth, The Matchmaker (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957), X.

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity,” in The Bonhoeffer Reader, eds. Clifford j. Green and Michael P. DeJonge (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013), 69.