It’s embarrassing to admit, but sometimes it gets boring. For no reason, it would seem, just like that. It is especially insulting when it becomes boring just when everything is conducive to fun. What to do (with yourself)?
Summer is a wonderful time. I’m not saying that this is the time for vacations, dachas, blessed idleness, travel. Nature is so benevolent and generous to us that you involuntarily imagine that the world itself was created in the summer, and God thought it was good. But, oddly enough, it is at this time that we are most often overtaken by a state that, if we talk about it, then with a laugh, as about a shameful trifle or a slight malaise. This state is called boredom.
Meanwhile, it’s not a joke. The English writer Charles Colton believed that “boredom breeds more gamblers than desire to win, more drunkards than lust, and causes more suicides than despair.” I don’t want to pick up this tragic note. But boredom, indeed, is an important condition, not in the least ashamed, and God knows how to cope with it. Actually, the whole problem is the causelessness of boredom. When there is a cause, there is a cure. What if there is no reason? Then fool, fool. Ashamed.
Don’t be stupid and don’t be stupid. And don’t be ashamed.
A person is ashamed of boredom also because he perceives it as a synonym for mediocrity. But this is not so, and this prejudice must be got rid of first of all. Mikhail Prishvin considered the phenomenon of boredom so powerful that he measured the strength of the artist by resistance to it, believed that he “combats the boredom of everyday life with his personal will.”
In past centuries, the master key for any problems was the so-called social determinism. All mental and spiritual troubles were explained by objective circumstances. So Alexander Blok, in an article with the significant title “Timelessness”, announced how “out of the good and pure morals of the Russian family, an immense gray spider of boredom has grown.” Here is the reason, and the meaning, and the answer – timelessness. Today, you will agree, we also have a lot of hunters to refer to the circumstances. But only in the matter of boredom does it look somehow not very clever, almost funny and defiantly weak in character.
Prishvin’s judgment seems to me more fruitful. They say that a man is the blacksmith of his own happiness. You can also say that a person is an artist of his life. Neither the absence of ideals in society, nor conflicts with the authorities, nor illnesses, nor family quarrels, nor bad weather, nor bad news can neither justify nor explain boredom.
On weekdays, we are saved by the schedule of the day, duties, rituals. And vacation time leaves one on one with life. Boredom awaits even on long-awaited journeys. Individual trips with friends or to friends is, of course, happiness. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Collective excursions and collective life quickly tire. Not for this we broke free to walk the herd. Some of my friends take a bag with discs on such trips to watch movies with their families in the evenings. I feel so sorry for them, and so sad. If I go to Venice (I plan to), will I really take Hollywood detectives with me?
In short, friends, no one is helping us here. That’s the mistake, perhaps, that we are looking for help in the fight against boredom from the cultural and social servants. Does not help. Luxurious feasts and an excess of wine. Evening discos, collective walks, imported shows – no, no! We need personal hours and minutes. And no one will provide them, except us. Even from a Byzantine sunset, one should not expect a gift if it does not respond to our interest. For some reason they think that interest comes from outside. Now they will bring something like this, and the soul will rejoice. But that only happens in the circus. And then in childhood, when the child is already full of faith in a miracle.
We organize interest in ourselves. This is a little prosaic of the romantic faith in the wonderful properties of life. But it is so. At worst, even self-composed charades, even poetic speeches, evenings of solved and unsolved mysteries, walks with an unexpected purpose, nighttime stargazing, homemade carnivals – everything is better than three hours with custom-made merry fellows. The difference is significant: there is some kind of, but own creativity.
Is it really impossible, however, to combat boredom with something more meaningful? Of course you can. Of course. Generally speaking, this is a philosophical question: how does interest awaken in a person? But now we have no time for philosophies – we need to somehow overcome boredom. Therefore, I will simply say: there are many activities for which there was not enough leisure time on working days. And in the summer – please. And no advice. It’s a personal matter. Any genre is good, except boring.