Thursday, July 20, 2017

Boredom – “a light bulb moment waiting to happen”


The article written today in the BBC website link below, proposes the hypotheses that boredom, may actually be a sign of creativity or may result in a font of new ideas that improve one’s own quality of life, let alone introduce something that benefits the world around us.


Personally I don’t like to use the word bored at all, it is contemplation time that I would rather call it, that now as I age and wake up at 4am each morning have an hours thinking time, and this thinking is what I have put down in my blog here at www.kalpanakaranna.blogspot.com as most of which is original thought borne out of thinking. Over ten years I have over 1,000 blog entries mostly generated out of this thinking/kalpanakarana welawa, and hence the blog name.

Different people have different abilities and desires. I gave up a fairly interesting life overseas, in a material sense, having lived there for 33 years. Then, I could indulge in my favorites like smoked salmon and malt whiskey, going to the horse races or driving around the National Parks, or driving my Jaguar on intercontinental road trips, (my car crossed the Atlantic twice) those pleasures I get extremely infrequently these days, and returned to Sri Lanka, thirteen years ago to see what I could do, and also to contribute something to the fabric of this society, at that time engrossed in a brutal civil war.

So this excessive thinking I seem to engage in, as an antidote to depression if I merely consider my circumstances alone! Has led me to expound on hair brained ideas, which in reality appear far more sound and grounded than some of the actual events I read about in Sri Lanka on a daily basis.

What I mean above, is that the reality SOAP OPERA that is played out in the media, documenting what is going on in this country, of the very reporting of the day to day work of our leaders and their henchmen, makes my ideas borne out of boredom/thinking time seem like a walk in the park, staid and mundane.

Contrary to popular myth as evidenced in social media about my life, (remember FB only shows an event when I am out and about) it is quite solitary, and purposeful on mundane activity of living and earning and paying one’s way to survive in this world, when one is relatively parsimonious out of necessity, I fortunately due to my inquisitive nature and enquiring mind and voracious appetite for gaining ideas on some new aspect of thinking, spend all the remaining waking hours day dreaming with a purpose.

What is that purpose? it is simply ways and means on how we in Sri Lanka can improve the quality of life of everyone who lives here, and voila www.kalpanakaranna.blogspot.com is the result. Thinking about it now, I could have changed the heading of the essay to why I named this blog and how I found an outlet there for sharing these bits of wisdom, some more off the charts than others, but nevertheless a breadth of fresh air.

I suppose I am frustrated that I have not been able to get it to the audience who really would benefit from most of this writing and that is the Sinhala speaking youth, who will find inspiration here for their purpose in life, something I find sadly lacking in them due to their poor education, that has replaced thinking with rote learning.

Anyway, coming back to the topic, I want to suggest to my reader that they set aside time in their day or week for doing nothing, (easier said than done) to explore their thoughts and find their inner self first, to know what makes them tick, and want to get up in the morning, and TRY to do something in life that makes them happier, as all our lives have the happy times and sad time, the good times and bad times, and we must just try to lengthen the good, while minimizing the bad, in order to enhance our happiness.

All this sounds very philosophical, but delve into the long article in the link, read it carefully, as it requires three passes at it before you understand in essence what it is trying to say, even though you think you got it the first time round. These kinds of articles never appear in normal reading, or media, and require some contemplation in applying it to your own circumstances.

Frankly, life is monotonous without the element of creativity, or improvement to a task or function we currently indulge or engage in. This exercise helps you to find a further step up in the satisfaction index, without having to be enslaved in the salvation of religion to rush to in times of crisis, as that does NOT solve your problems, this creative and contemplative time of day dreaming COULD actually be the savior of our mundane lives into something that is far more meaningful and purposeful.


In a crazy world where time is the last thing we have, where we rush around like headless chickens to simply live, we will find ourselves dead before we have time for ourselves; a moment before sleeping or soon after waking, at the silent time of the day to think about improving our lives for the better and with it the lives of others. Then set the day in motion by taking those ideas into the day and act on some aspect of our creativity we get in this eureka moment, for want of a better word. It is inadvisable to merely live an eventful life full of engagements, or fill ones day and dates with activity for oneself or ones children without the 

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Damn I wish I had time to be bored.

Then again I guess I must set aside some time to do nothing and see what comes out of it.

Anonymous said...

Set up a place so the bored can come and you can harness their creativity, as the bored are too lazy to write their ideas with the same enthusiasm you seem to have to remember to jot it down in this blog

Anonymous said...

is it difficult to get your ideas into the Sinhala papers? seems the papers are full of useless drivel! surely they can make some space for your thoughtful works!!