Hey Kids, It’s Okay to be Bored

I’m bored.

Bored.
Bored.
Bored.

This was just minutes after ordering supper at a restaurant. You know what? It’s okay to be bored. It’s high time you learned to entertain your thoughts. It’s high time you learned to converse with other human beings. It’s high time you learned that sometimes in life you will bored.

And it’s okay.

Constantly in motion, constantly stimulated, the kids aren’t sure what happens when everything stops. There’s no app for sitting still. Sometimes you will just have to sit and entertain your thoughts for a while. I know thinking is something unusual for you, but it won’t hurt you. I promise.

With all of the lights and sounds and blips and bloops in today’s world, it’s no wonder that a constant need for stimulation is so heavily sought after by kids. TV. Tablets. Phones. Toys. They all need batteries and they all make sound and light up. How many non-battery toys do kids play with these days? How many adults turn to their phone when they have down time or are looking for something to do? It doesn’t matter that they’re sitting in the company of their friends. The lure is there.

It’s okay to be bored. It’s okay to use that boredom to think of wild and crazy ideas.

A pretty purple giraffe that drives a dump truck

An ice cream cone with 57 layers… what are those 57 flavors?

Hitting a homerun in the bottom of the 9th to win the game

Doing those stunts we saw the slopestyle snowboarders doing in the Olympics

What would happen if the shit really did hit the fan?

Daydream! I, myself, am guilty of it. I wander off to “Lalaland” more frequently than I should. Discuss! Talk to the people you are sitting with and tell them about your thoughts. Were you wondering something? Were you fascinated? Were you awed? Were you laughing hysterically? Were you pissed off? Tell them. There’s no need for an app for real life. It is its own app and it’s amazing. It never glitches. It never buffers. The images are always HD. The sound is surround. There are smells. There are feels. It’s amazing.

It’s okay to be bored. You don’t have start picking fights with your brother just for something to do. Go make something. A dream catcher. A leprechaun trap. A comic book. Draw a picture. Paint a picture. Paint a rock. Or mold with clay.

It’s okay to be bored. Go outside. Fresh air and sunshine are amazingly good natural remedies for boredom. Climb a tree. Explore the brook. Go “lion hunting” in the backyard. Ride a bike, a scooter, a skateboard, or rollerblades in-line-skates. Throw a Frizbee. Kick a ball. Throw a ball. Whatever… just go!

It’s okay to bored. You don’t need constant stimulation. You don’t even have to always be in motion. There is much to be learned from sitting still and silent. Finding your inner self can be quite a journey. I found my inner self one day. Turns out my inner self is still 6. You’re not going to find yours sitting in front of a screen surrounded by a cacophony of sounds and lights.

It’s quite the conundrum to be writing via the internet on my tablet about getting off the screen and being bored without it. So, I’m turning in now and I’m going to go read a book. (side note: I’m reading The Orphan Child about a woman who steals a Jewish baby off a Nazi train then joins the circus)

And it’s not going to be boring.