The Wisdom of Being Bored
According to Arthur Brooks, “You need to be bored.” In a short, straightforward YouTube mini-talk, the Harvard professor and best-selling author insisted that, far from being something to overcome, boredom is necessary for human flourishing. It is, in fact, a practice to cultivate, and the commitment to avoid boredom at all costs is behind many of our worst habits, problems, and anxieties.
To say that this kind of thinking runs against societal norms is quite the understatement. According to a Harvard study from 2014, many people prefer even pain to boredom. Placed in a room with nothing to do for 15 minutes but push a button that would deliver an electric shock, “(a) big majority of the participants gave themselves shocks instead of thinking about nothing.”
In the video, Brooks first described how boredom works on our minds:
Boredom is a tendency for us to not be occupied otherwise cognitively, which switches over our thinking system to use a part of our brain that’s called the default mode network. That sounds fancy. It’s really not.
The default mode network is a bunch of structures in your brain that switch on when you don’t have anything else to think about. So, you forgot your phone, and you’re sitting at a light, for example. That’s when your default mode network goes on.
In other words, boredom cannot be explained by the desire we have, especially in modern Western culture, to just be entertained. After all, movies, music, plays, and games are often welcome respites for the weariness of work and stress. Instead, Brooks argues, it is essential to seek times of stillness, quiet, and boredom for a much more profound reason.
One of the reasons we have such an explosion of depression and anxiety in our society today is because people actually don’t know the meaning of their lives, much less so in previous generations. Tons of data show this, and furthermore, we’re not even looking.
Why not? I’ll tell you why not. We figured out a way to eliminate boredom. We’ve been able, almost completely, to shut off the default mode network in our brains.
How? The answer is that thing in your pocket with the screen, which you take out even when you’re standing on the street corner waiting for the light to change, is like, I might have to wait here for 15 seconds.
Of course, before Brooks said so, plenty of Biblical authors spoke about silence and meditation. The Psalms are full of calls to be silent and wait on the Lord. In both the Old and New Testaments, we read of God’s people and even Christ Himself regularly seeking times of stillness and meditation. According to Isaiah, it is in “rest” and “quietness” that strength is found.
To be clear, the meditation called for in the Bible and practiced by Christians is distinct (or at least should be) from the emptying of the mind that characterizes Eastern religious practice. In Biblical meditation, the heart and mind are to be full of the truths God has revealed to us about Himself. We are to think outward and upward in honor and awe, not inward into the void of our own empty souls.
This could take the form of a weekly Sabbath day rest from screens and buying. It may involve cultivating a habit of taking long walks in a world that was created to scream out the glory of God. Instead, especially in a culture struggling with meaninglessness, the temptation is to perpetually distract ourselves, to avoid silence, and to push away the questions we do not want to face.
But as T.S. Eliot warned, “Endless invention, endless experiment (b)rings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness.” Constant noise and distraction will bring, “(k)nowledge of speech, but not of silence; (k)nowledge of words, (but) ignorance of the Word.”
Boredom can be a tool to help us think more deeply about what matters most. Silence can be the context for exercising the mind and cultivating the imagination in a way that Scripture invites. If Brooks is right, cultivating boredom is a habit we all need, especially in a culture like ours.
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Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/Fizkes
John Stonestreet is President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, and radio host of BreakPoint, a daily national radio program providing thought-provoking commentaries on current events and life issues from a biblical worldview. John holds degrees from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (IL) and Bryan College (TN), and is the co-author of Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview.
The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of CrosswalkHeadlines.
BreakPoint is a program of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. BreakPoint commentaries offer incisive content people can't find anywhere else; content that cuts through the fog of relativism and the news cycle with truth and compassion. Founded by Chuck Colson (1931 – 2012) in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today's news and trends. Today, you can get it in written and a variety of audio formats: on the web, the radio, or your favorite podcast app on the go.
