I tend to be interested in lots of things (read: I’m easily distracted) and I think of ‘interesting’ as a positive word, implying novel, varied, creative and perhaps unexpected or challenging.
But there’s definitely a negative kind of ‘interesting’. I’m reminded of the apocryphal Chinese curse ‘may you live in interesting times’: interesting can mean drama, misdirection, pointless complexity, and change for the sake of change. Being simply interesting doesn’t imply that something is important, worthwhile or benign. For me, ‘interesting’ has become one of those utterances, like ‘engagement’, ‘productive’, and ‘hardworking families’, that raise an eyebrow of skepticism.
We are taught to fear boredom and its consequences - usually subtly, through inference - by our media, entertainment companies and, yes, even our employers. Boredom is pathologised (health websites list its as a condition linked to depression): Quick! Distract yourself with gossip, drama, other people’s problems, busywork, and grind. The devil makes work for idle hands! Our attention is a scarce resource, so don’t hog it for yourself.
What this rather flat view fails to account for is that boredom comes in many shades, some of which can feel negative in the moment, but all of which are instructive. We have, for example:
‘Understimulated’ bored: when there isn’t enough to do, but social convention or happenstance prevents you from doing anything about it
‘Confused and overwhelmed’ bored, which is familiar to anyone who had a sub-par science teacher
‘Burned-out and numb’ bored: a cousin of ‘Gen-z ennui’, this is caused by overstimulation and manifests as an impotence of spirit and lack of strong will in any particular direction (i.e. city professional hive worker)
‘Avoiding a task’ bored: the big force-field that appears just when I have something important to do that isn’t novel, challenging or urgent, and magically deflects me to another task (like writing a blog)
‘Indifferent’ bored: this is actually something most public services should aspire to induce - from taking a bus, to having a vaccine, there are many areas where invisibility is a sign of excellence, and ‘interesting’ indicates a failure
‘Peacefully empty’ bored: the emptiness that fills the imagination - this is what I think of as ‘good bored’, being appropriately stimulated yet unencumbered by pressures, anxieties or distractions. Today, companies sell it back to us and call it mindfulness. This mental state is why people fly thousands of miles to remote beaches to be bored in the right way.
The right kind of boredom is good for our health and is a necessary condition for much creativity. The big open secret is that this is all accessible to all of us, for free - we just have to resist the lure of ‘interesting’ from time to time. (Step two is to listen to our own minds, which is non-trivial and nonlinear, but one of the most fruitful things anyone can do.)
Here’s to embracing the countercultural and creative potential of boredom.