Bored to Enlightenment

I meditate. Almost every day. For years now. And yet sitting still and doing basically nothing for 20 minutes is ridiculously challenging. It’s a pain in the butt—literally and figuratively. My Mexican-jumping bean brain bings around wildly and I squirm (again, literally and figuratively) in discomfort. I’m bored, really! Bored in that ten-year-old kid way. “Mom, I’m bored! There’s nothing to do!” You remember that restless, stomp around the house in search of something mood? Obviously there was plenty to do, in one sense, but there was nothing that captured your interest. Or maybe more accurately, nothing that soothed and comforted your restless soul.

Possibly when you were ten, you turned to Twinkies or TV. Lovely comforters. But often, of course, the TV had nothing but Jerry Lewis telethons and possibly your mom, like mine, didn’t stock Twinkies. And so I ended up flopping down on my bed in frustration. And then—sometimes--my attention would be drawn to the raindrops rolling down my window pain. I’d become absorbed in their funny, halting race. Which drop would win? And then two drops would magically merge into one and proceed onward united. And I’d contemplate whether people were like raindrops, just gliding down an invisible track toward an unforeseen but inevitable end. And then I’d just listen to the patter of rain on the roof and hear the musical rhythm underneath. And 20 minutes would slide by unnoticed. Twenty out-of-time minutes.

And without knowing it, I had meditated.

Is it a coincidence that so many religious and spiritual leaders have advocated some form of present-mindedness? Be it meditation, or repetitive chanting, or counting beads, or uniform praying. So many great spiritual teachers tell us to engage in a form of ritualized boredom. I think contemplative teachers realized the power of boredom. Something must happen to our synapses when we force our minds and bodies to settle. It’s such a struggle. And yet if you wrestle through the discomfort, something profound happens.

And I further wonder whether American children today spend enough time being bored. There are so many more opportunities for distraction, comfort and entertainment. Maybe boredom is the what’s really missing from the ADD/ADHD world we live in.