Boredom is not all bad.

Many creative people have found that even being bored silly is not all bad. Anna Quindlen, in an article for Newsweek entitled “Doing Nothing Is Something,” talks about summers as a child. “How boring it was. Of course, it was the making of me as a human being and a writer. Downtime is where we become ourselves, looking into the middle distance, kicking at the curb, lying on the grass or sitting on the stoop and staring at the tedious blue of the summer sky. I don’t believe you can write poetry, or compose music, or become an actor without downtime, and plenty of it, a hiatus that passes for boredom but is really the quiet moving of the wheels inside that fuels creativity. And that to me is one of the saddest things about the lives of American children today. Soccer leagues, acting classes, tutors...our children are as overscheduled as we are, and that is saying something.”

In fact, boredom is credited with being the driving force behind many scientific discoveries, inventions, works of art, and even great acts of silliness. We can all be grateful Isaac Newton was lying around under an apple tree at a crucial moment. Many people, bored with the life that was expected of them, have used boredom as a launching pad into the risks necessary for a life more suited to their gifts and talents. And it was on a long boring train trip that J.K. Rowling was surprised by the “sight” of an imaginary boy with unruly hair, round glasses and a scar walking towards her up the aisle. That was, she said, the first time she envisioned young Harry Potter.

Source: http://www.beliefnet.com/story/129/story_12940_1.html

Posted in Posted by cecily kuoc at 1:21 PM