We subscribe to all available modes of amusement.
Of course, we do not go gently into that ho-hum night. Conditioning apart, conscience apart, creativity runs its course. But secretly, we are watching the others, fearing being watched in turn a large part of the busyness owing to our notions of an active, meaningful, productive life. To make it look like we are going somewhere, that at the end of duties done, chores, partying, we stand justified as buzzing bees. So we have a plan of action, plan B, back-up plan, game plan, master plan. The business of busy is to be busy, look busy. It is a toss-up what will get him first, ageing or sheer boredom. Lined up like zombies, handed various remote controls, man is conscious of his mortality like never before, flipping gadgets frantically, knowing fully well the futility of fighting such a powerful enemy. Like an inbuilt spiritual boomerang or a spring-fitted homing device. But his nemesis is just around the corner, and therefore there comes a day he is all played out, when he will stamp his feet and demand petulantly and pettily ‘what next?’ For that is what boredom does - it resurrects from every death, returns from every exile. And for the while that he is inventing or experimenting, creating or constructing, he is able to forget. In the 21st century, his toys have changed somewhat. All the while that man laboured from cave to skyscraper, the thing that kept him going was this: keeping himself entertained, keeping himself entertained. Setting off a chain of bigger rattle, better rattle, louder rattle, e-rattle, and thus running out of rattles altogether one day. By the time the bubble wrap comes off, we are already inserted into tomorrow, with another 24 hours to kill.Mankind’s chasing of its own tail can be traced back to its inherently infantile need for a rattle and an eternal predisposition toward distraction. What has already happened and what will happen infuse our today with anxiety, robbing the here and now of vital immediacy and lending instead a surreal haziness to our day-to-day life, distancing us from what is actually happening. And while key memories invest the past with a speed purely for flashbacking purposes, the present is in excruciating slow motion. Slowly and steadily, there’s a race to be lost. Doing the same thing over and over and over again. Taking that boulder up the hill and down the hill. Glassy-eyed kids before the idiot box, or shooting classmates in school corridors. Of course, it almost never does that’s what makes it so boring.” “At any given moment, the floor may open up. “Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time,” writer-illustrator Edward Gorey had said.
It is the one modern-day malady that can turn fatal: death by yawning. In our relentless pursuit of entertainment, by the very act of ratifying most boring, more boring and least boring, we have become default experts in the field of boredom. While eyes are open and seem focused on flickering images, the soul has curled up in a corner with a ’nighty-night. The humdrum monotony of daily living takes its toll. However, boredom can be a powerful incentive too, with its own set of advantages, writes Shinie Antony It is precious time wasted, a dish uncooked, an extra-marital liaison begun, an artistic impulse snuffed, a novel abandoned, a martyrdom, mini or major.
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