Virtues of boredom

Once upon a time, I was totally occupied with work. And then came boredom. So, I didn’t know how to take it and went on a mission to find out what it is. At the end of the mission, I didn’t find an answer, so I killed everyone else on the planet who wasn’t bored and felt happy that the rest of humanity was also bored along with me. Right.
Lets start over… with the real story this time. After a long semester, I was a little scared of the winter break. I was scared because I had nothing to do during that period. No plans to go out. No trips to any place. Three weeks of absolutely nothing awaited me. When I say nothing, I don’t mean a life of loneliness in the middle of a forest. It just means I didn’t have any concrete plans to go visit any friends or relatives (or a trip back home like last year). The inevitable three weeks began with an upside down routine, also called the jet-lagged routine, or the IST routine. Sleep in the morning and wake up at night. Counter Strike was the biggest draw to begin with and a couple of other games joined the line-up as the vacation continued. But these games would take up about 6 hours a day (yup, we did play that long). What about the other parts? Food took up a few hours. We had really good food this time round. Well, those were the oceans of boredom which were so empty, you could almost lose yourself in completely useless things and not feel guilty after you get back to reality.
It was one of those trains of thought which actually led to coin the term “virtues of boredom”(if no one else has trademarked it, I wish to) (and even if you did, I will buy it from you). I realized that boredom is that time in life which makes you realize that your life isn’t overflowing with stuff to do. You have enough time to schedule any number of stuff that you want. You are like an under-utilized engine which has enough free time to refit itself with a turbocharger and see how it sounds (I am a car freak, if you didn’t know).
I think life comes with a project specification. That specification tells you what to expect and what you are expected to do. Once you understand that specification, you have figured out what life is all about and you won’t be really scared out of your wits about anything. You will understand everything around you properly once you have completely absorbed the specification. It is a pretty big one, and I don’t think mastering it is achievable, at least not when you are loaded with work for 9 plus months of a year. But you can get a rough idea of what it is. And that’s all that really matters. I can proudly say that I have understood some of it, and what it tells me is that being bored is a good thing. You have fulfilled all the things you wanted to do in the other parts of your life, and you still have time left to do something else. Something new for which you don’t have to sacrifice other things. And when you are bored, you find a lot more things to do. Personally, I wish there is always some amount of boredom in my life (not the sort of boredom while sitting in an office with loads of work on your head). And that boredom allows me to come up with new things I want to explore. This time round, I realized that there is such a thing called useless thinking, but that’s the topic for another blog.
My first ever suggestion to readers… always leave enough time to be bored in your life. It really does feel so good to be bored. :)
P.S. I was a teaching assistant last semester and have been studying for quite a few years. So the word “specification” is something I hear and use a lot. :)