The wise man who could easily have been a preacher said to me, “The best part of your day is when you are bored!”
“I’m never bored,” I told him happily, “I’ve my phone, filled with stuff to keep me away from even a minute’s boredom!”
“Exactly,” said the wise man, “And that is why the best things may not be happening in your life! Some of the greatest things in history, happened in bored moments,” said the wiseman, “Imagine if Newton had been on a mobile when the apple fell, he would hardly have noticed it falling and even if had he would have been so busy working on his Facebook profile to have thought deeper into the significance of the fall!”
“You may be right there!” I said grudgingly.
“Take a bored child,” said the wiseman, “What does he or she do?”
“They look around, they want to fill their time, and then with whatever they have they create a game.” I said, “I’ve seen children playing with empty cartons, creating imaginative stories out of them!”
“You give that same child a phone,” said the wiseman, “or put them in front of a screen and their creativity becomes zero!”
“True!” I admitted.
“A child growing up without being stuck on a phone or screen, develops imagination to create the greatest of inventions! And it’s not just about imagination and inventions, it’s also about reaching out to others!”
“Reaching out?” I asked, intrigued by the conversation.
“Just imagine you are traveling in a train and don’t have a cell phone to keep you occupied, you look around for conversation. You reach out!”
“Today we reach in,” I agreed, “to our pocket for the phone…”
“And all that the phone readily offers, is you to be occupied with yourself!”
“I’m so glad we had this conversation,” I said, “It’s really going to change the way I’ve allowed technology to take over my life!”
“It’s like marvelling at all the bright fireworks on a Diwali night,” said the wiseman, “And then after the fireworks are over and instead of going to bed, you look up again into the sky and see a billion stars twinkling and then realise that the greatest show was there all the time, every night, but you only look up when manmade fireworks lit the sky! Boredom,” he continued, “Is like our sky, majestic, marvellous, always there in its magnificence, to be used, to inspire us towards great thought, but we like fools crave always for the excitement of firework displays whether in the sky or on our phones.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Who you speaking to?” asked the wife, looking at me sitting alone in my chair.
“Boredom,” I said, “what wise thoughts he’s given me today..!”
Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and author. He blogs at www.bobsbanter.com and can be reached at bobsbanter@gmail.com
