Photo by Niklas Hamman on Unsplash
‘Creativity is the residue of time wasted.’ – Einstein
‘The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.’ – Dorothy Parker
No one likes the feeling of being bored. However, with the busyness of everyday life increasing year by year, I worry that no one has the time to be bored. It has become commonplace to say ‘busy’ when asked how one is. And ‘busy’ is usually seen as a good thing. Well, as a self-employed person, I might say ‘busy’ as shorthand for ‘I have plenty of work,’ and that’s a good thing, isn’t it? But is it really good to be busy all the time?
I think that it is essential for all of us to have time when we do nothing. No phone, no book, no knitting, no chores. Mooching and pottering could be permitted. Because that’s when we have ideas. If we keep ourselves so busy that we don’t have time to think, how are we going to daydream? What about those ideas that just seem to come from nowhere? I know that I’ve never had one of those when I’ve been scrolling on my phone.
For young people, it’s even more important. I know that many young people are busy every day. Of course, there is school. And after school, clubs, sport, extra tuition (that’s me!), homework. In the holidays, there are more clubs, camps, pony days and trips. I don’t want to be one of those people who says, ‘In my day, we didn’t do any of that stuff; two weeks with our grandparents in Bognor Regis in the summer was our lot for the whole year.’ But I am one of those people, and that’s exactly what it was like for me. My grandparents lived in Bognor Regis. I used to get terribly bored, and my parents were always busy. My brother and I used to make dens in the garden and I used to read, write and daydream. My brother used to make stuff. More than 50 years later, my job is about reading, writing and imagination and his is about…well, making stuff, but on rather a bigger scale.
My point is that we wouldn’t have been entertaining ourselves in those ways if we hadn’t been bored. We found out what we liked doing.
It’s time to protect and value ‘time wasted’ and ‘boredom.’ We need to provide space for creativity to emerge. Just a thought.
