On Boredom

There is an excess of everything in the current world. In the words of T.S. Eliot, we are "distracted from distraction by distraction".

Last week, I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog on how he discovers new ideas and here's what he says:

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

You get ideas when you ask yourself simple questions. The most important of the questions is just, What if...?

(What if you woke up with wings? What if your sister turned into a mouse?)

Another important question is, If only...

(If only I could shrink myself small as a button. If only a ghost would do my homework.)

And then there are the others: I wonder... ('I wonder what she does when she's alone...') and If This Goes On... ('If this goes on telephones are going to start talking to each other, and cut out the middleman...') and Wouldn't it be interesting if... ('Wouldn't it be interesting if the world used to be ruled by cats?')...

An idea doesn't have to be a plot notion, just a place to begin creating. Plots often generate themselves when one begins to ask oneself questions about whatever the starting point is.

And this made me realize the hysteria around productivity and to utilize each and every minute of the day we have- the hustle culture as you call it.

What if we slow down? Distance ourselves? Disconnect to reconnect?

I have realized lately that the most innovative ideas I got were during the times I was bored and had nothing to think about. Maria Popova writes:

There is a creative purpose to daydreaming, even to boredom. The best ideas come to us when we stop actively trying to coax the muse into manifesting and let the fragments of experience float around our unconscious mind in order to click into new combinations.

 Carl Sagan who found in science — profound awe, deep reverence, a source of spiritual elevation wrote:

There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness. . .

So, are you bored enough? Are you building pockets of stillness in life?