Warning: This is a very boring post
I have always had this tendency to analyze, trace reasons and try to look at things from outside. And now that I am bored I want to track down my thoughts about Boredom … and since we’ve started The Blo2, then I’ll blo2 them down as well.
You can guess already that this post has a high potential of adding to your boredom … first because it’s about boredom ... and second because I am in the analyzing mood, which always proved to be very boring to people around me.
However I mentioned before in the welcome post comment I am not blo22ing the boredom thoughts for you anyway.
Now to boredom . I think it’s unarguably the MOST common feeling on the planet today … It’s like the default feeling of our era … in the sense that unless I am something else then I am bored.
The funny thing I discovered is that “boredom” is a relatively new word to the English dictionary!! Only 100-150 years ! … And they added it then just to have an English word for the French “ennui” :) … and since Arabic lacks Internet documentations so I couldn’t find similar info about “malal” or “zaha2” etc … but my guess is that they won’t be too old.
Also as far back in time as eye-witnesses can tell me, boredom wasn’t that common in 50’s or 60’s …Definitely not like now. It’s the trait of nowadays.
I tried to think of definitions and found few on the web that made a lot of sense to me. Boredom is a state … a state that a person may run into as a reaction to a stimulus. The boredom stimulus may be an active one such as routine and repetition of events that is perceived by the person as boring. Or the stimulus might be a passive one which is basically a lack of interesting and entertaining stimuli (things to see, hear or do, physically or intellectually); and this lack will lead you to getting bored.
Mmm ... bored of getting nowhere?? I have to make it clear that you shouldn’t expect to reach anywhere when I am in the analyzing mood :)
I am not writing about boredom to reach solutions … I have always tended to put blames when analyzing problems... So for the sake of throwing blames, I will blame negative perception and lazy passiveness for now.
Negative perception is the main catalyst for the active boredom stimulus, the routine and repeating events. I sometimes feel bored even while being very busy at work. I often wake up extremely bored just from thinking that I will do the same boring stuff again for another day/week …but this because of perceiving what I am doing as dull which is not always the case and perceiving my day as uninteresting which is not a fair way to describe it.
The challenge here is to decide to think of what you are doing as interesting and not to sleepwalk through the day, to take everyday as a unique adventure and that is a decision to be taken with the morning shay be laban. It is an attitude.
Lazy passiveness is the medium where the passive boredom stimulus grows. In English … I will get bored because nothing entertaining is happening or nothing interesting to do or to watch or to hear … I accuse me of being passive and lazy for waiting idly for something to come and take the role of a clown to entertain me or somebody to come and tell me some jokes or suggest me some things to do to fill my time.
If you ask Mee, that’s the fruit of TeeVee!!
Another way to look at passiveness, that was written on The Duke’s blog, Nevine wrote about people who would get VERY bored and annoyed of waiting for somebody who is late. I will paste the words … While you are waiting for someone or something, you have the option to choose what you will make of the waiting experience. You can actually just sit there and wait; you can choose to walk away (not a good idea if it's your wife/fiancee - somewhat suicidal actually); you can choose to do something completely different to fill the time. You can choose to be angry, and anxious, or you can choose to meditate, and relax. But what you make of the waiting experience is entirely up to you - not the person you are waiting for.
I think same relates to almost all free time … you have the option to choose what you will do with the free time experience … you can passively give up to the lack of entertainment and get bored .. or you can crack your fingers ( no names here :D )
I am terribly bored of writing and of this analytical mood … Time to get out of it if I want to have any chance of you coming back to The Blo2.
…
I logged in now to post what I have written … and to my surprise … I found that Rosa posted a blo2 of her own just few minutes ago… of course you don’t need me to tell you what’s in it because it’s right down here … but what’s really really nice of her is that it serves as a perfect case study for my own blo2 :D
7 comments:
I didn't mean that we are lazy because we rather stay in front of the TV... Well, many do; but I can't remember the last time I spent an evening or more than a couple of hours in front of the TV. It certainly didn't happen at least throughout the last year.
But what I meant is to consider TV (as a media technology and as an industry) to be a strong factor to the passiveness of the people generally nowadays. The TV created into the generations that grew up with it at home (me included) a very passive and lazy definition of entertainment.
It is instinctive that to get amused, I need to sit and let something amuse me. Just like a TV, and unlike a book which needs an action from my behalf (choose it and read it), also unlike calling your friend who came from abroad which also requires your active involvement (in fetching the number, calling her, thinking of stuff to say, thinking of stuff to reply what she says, and risking that you would need to get dressed and go to meet her some 2000 meters away from where you are!!).
OMG i nearly fell asleep.....
for god's sake save us the analyzing lethal mode , ur bored and analyzing it? :S
to hell with TV , go play a game or a sport , and yes ur lazy so am i :P that's y video games r perfection when it comes to boredom , it's interactive and got colors :P yay :D
Not too hard to guess who's the anonymous with the clever idea of video games :D
How haven't i thought of it before?!! .. and I wasted all my life and the precious time i spent writing the blo2 while I could have made it to level 37 in Kombat-of-The-Immortal-Fighters-and-The-Invincible-Slayers VIII :P
Although I enjoyed the funny lines in the post and comments but I really find this a sad fact in the life of almost all the people I know, and as Na22ash said, almost all the people of our time.
Actually I had recently read a piece by a famous contemporary marketing consultant (I forgot his name though). He was saying the same thing: "People are bored to their ears; they wake up bored, watch boring TV, go to their boring work, commute back to their boring home, watch more boring TV and then go to sleep bored..."
I think boredom is not a real thing; it is just the absence of interesting or meaningful things in our lives. Like cold is just the absence of heat and darkness is just the absence of light.
Having my second letter Myers-Briggs personality type as an "S" (Sensor), unlike Na22ash's "N" (Intuitive; which one can easily tell by reading his article), I will be more solutions oriented down here.
1. SET SOME GOALS
2. WORK HARD TOWARDS ACHIEVING THEM
Na22ash wrote: "this because of perceiving what I am doing as dull which is not always the case and perceiving my day as uninteresting which is not a fair way to describe it."
WRITING DOWN YOUR LONG/SHORT TERM GOALS AND ASPIRATIONS EVERY MORNING IS A MAGICAL SOLUTION THAT IS MENTIONED IN ALMOST EVERY SELF HELP BOOK. IT REALLY HELPS YOU STAY FOCUSED ON THE THINGS THAT REALLY MATTER TO YOU AND TAKES AWAY THE BOREDOM RESULTING FROM EVERYDAY ROUTINES SINCE IT MAKES YOU FEEL THAT YOU ARE ALWAYS ADVANCING TOWARDS SOMETHING DESIRABLE AND MEANINGFUL AND AS PER MY HUMBLE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE; IT IS THE FASTEST WAY TO ACTUALLY REALIZE YOUR GOALS!!!!!
Na22ash wrote "Lazy passiveness is the medium where the passive boredom stimulus grows. In English … I will get bored because nothing entertaining is happening or nothing interesting to do or to watch or to hear"
GREAT, THEN FIND SOMETHING INTERESTING TO DO....
NOTHING WILL BE MORE INTERESTING TO YOU THAN WORKING TOWARDS ACHIEVING YOUR GOALS.
Statistically, only 3% of the US population practices goal setting so I don't expect the number to be any better among this blog readers but anyway, I am gonna write a short paragraph about how to set your goals, may be it will help someone...
Get a blank piece of paper (or open notepad.exe) and answer the following questions in the present tense as if you already have what you want. E.g. I am..., I have..., I earn…
1. What things would you attempt to do if you knew beyond the shadow of doubt that you cannot fail. E.g. Become a movie star, Run for presidency,…
2. What will you do with your life if you won 100 Million Dollars (i.e. if money was not an issue, and you also had a lot of it to spend)? E.g. take a year off to paint in the Swiss Alps, travel the world in a private yacht,...
3. What will you do if you knew you only have one more week to live? I.e. you won't care about what people think and you will just do what you think is more important to you and what you have been delaying all your life...
You don't have to be that extreme as the example answers of course, I just wanted to make the point clear.
Answer those questions in hand-writing daily on the personal, financial, relational, spiritual and physical aspects of your life and you will eliminate most of the boredom in your life and better yet those answers will become so engraved in your sub conscience mind that they will start to gradually become real...
Remember that "A man becomes what he thinks about most of the time". If you keep dwelling on your boredom, you will just get more of it and if you think about your aspirations you will attract them to your reality…
fe masal by2ol lawla e7'telaf el azwa2 la baret el sela3 , the point is not to submit to this boredom and make a big deal out of it , instead try to find something that can entertain u and get u out of this state , doesn matter what that is. I for one dont like passiveness of TV as much as many otehrs might , for me TV is mostly for football. Games r a perfect solution for this , they're interactive and compettitive and make ur mind work without having to work ur lazy body :P , u can play games on yahoo games cards maybe or whatever that's not as passive for example.
People might still wanna read a book or go for a walk it doesn matter what u do as long as u try to do something about it.
whatever makes u tick then yay :D go for it.
it's unfortunately a very common stereotype passed onto us from older people who came to know about early days of gaming as an electronic means to deal with reflexes of those mentally challenged children from the early 80s that games r shallow or pointless. it's sad that the youth would submit to such ideas although u surely know how hard it is to create animate and deal with graphics , some games r a visula work of art. games now have stories and even novels to their background which makes many games very intriguing. games r no longer about score or yay lvl 37 in pacman :P. it's just another amusement park , u dont like it u go look for a more suited 1 depending on your taste.
also mizo we've already nearly excluded taking TV for a solution so u might wanna read again (As u know Wrestling is a TV show :P)
:) So as you can see my friends, the boredom analysis proves to be a very interesting topic:P
It successfully shows the non-similarities between people, their tastes, their perceptions and their reactions. In that sense, I have to back my dear AnonyJo in his depending-on-your-taste point of view.
How and why one gets bored and what one would do about it varies greatly from an ITFP to an ESTJ to a ZZZZ :D The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a pretty sophisiticated scheme of classifying personalities. Check it out! (works if ur bored)
I truely believe in what Bassem wrote at the end of his epic comment.. You attract to reality what you think about the most. "Believing is Seeing".
Thank you guys for passing by and commenting ... keep it up!
off topic here guys but whomever u r , if ur in cairo watch out for what u eat or drink , typhoid is spreading around , i have a daibetic cousin in hospital and another friend's friend got it 2 , i'm here in alex and i spend 90% of my time here reading news papers and tabloids they're makin a big deal out of it.
i was reading rami's post when my cousin's news came to me so i though i might pass the info. remind ur family memebers and whomever u got here in egypt to quit the junk food and ESPECIALLY el ahawy elly mabet2omosh men 3aleha , contaminated water and food r typhoid's mean of spreading around. vacination or watching what u eat/drink is how u evade it , especially in this hot weather period.
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