Betwixt and Between

Dedicated to my father Barry who has always encouraged me to meet boredom fearlessly.

“I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.”

— “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley

Do you remember the nail-biting boredom of your school days? I remember fiddling with and playing with the pink plastic watch that my grandfather had given me as a birthday present, willing the time to go faster, although instead, it dragged even more slowly. Sometimes this gnawing sensation of boredom crept up on me in classes where I struggled enormously. More often though and much more upsettingly, boredom attacked me in subjects that I genuinely loved such as English and the other Humanities which was due to the tedious way that they were sometimes taught.

Who doesn’t worry about being bored? Who hasn’t bitten their nails down to the quick because of sitting in a tiresome limbo at the dentist’s or on a delayed plane with absolutely nothing to do but wait, lost in a rabbit hole of thoughts about all the useful, interesting things you could be doing instead. It takes a special kind of zen to meet those thoughts with deep breaths and the gentle self-enquiry usually espoused by the Dalai Lama and Yoda rather than anyone else particularly human.

Being nicknamed ‘slow and steady’ by my handicrafts teacher did little to quell my growing anxiety that I was about as exciting as a secondhand Volvo. Believing this story about myself meant that my peers believed it too, quickly leading me to social misfit status and my own resigned assumption that I would never be ‘cool’ or ‘popular.’ Outside of school hours, I was normally absorbed in books, my sister employing all of her charm offensive, followed by militant negotiation and eventual red mist. Rolling her eyes up to the ceiling, she would huff and puff and then blow my straw-house self-esteem to pieces by accusing me of ‘being SO BOOOORING.’ I was usually ready to play by that point.

As for the unnerving state of being bored, that came later. As I have described in previous articles, my parents courageously and off the back of extensive research, supported my sister and I to be responsible for our educational journeys.

This radical approach led to boredom almost immediately and on a regular basis for the first couple of years. No longer were we waking up to a designated timetable and agenda every day as we had when we went to school but instead an entirely blank slate. It would have been scarier had it not been for the loving, constant and conscious support of my parents. We were not abandoned but guided through conscious decision making practise, as mum and dad did in their own one-to-one coaching sessions. What was important to us in terms of learning? What excited and inspired us? Did we want more social interaction or less and so on and so on.

We did not want anything particularly structured for a while. We had a few activities that my parents set up for us, but mainly we were revelling in a new form of freedom that neither of us had experienced outside of school holidays. It took us a few years to realise that we were always learning, whether it was in an organised lesson or not. Boredom in those early days of home education led us back to hours of imagination-based play time with each other, friends from the street where we lived and the gently increasing numbers of home educating peers.

Our parents realised early on that they could offer us an almost unlimited plethora of subjects and individuals and that once my sister and I got bored enough, we would choose different classes and lessons. That contrary to many well meaning, concerned friends and relatives, boredom and empty space were actually vital to discovering our own impulses learn, express, play and create. Often, my sister and I would have to get mind-numbingly bored before we would finally catapult ourselves into another epic game of Barbie dolls or something else.

This mindful space of autonomy that our parents gifted us with has been vital to who I have become as an adult. Being bored has only ever led me to more self discovery, to travel in Africa, Europe and the USA and ultimately to a Bachelor of Arts in Socio-Cultural Anthropology. With the gift of boredom, my sister has doggedly and persistently pursued her musical career to the extent that she now makes a full-time living from it. Not bad for two sisters who only have four GCSEs between them!

When I began university at the age of 24 with only eight hours of contact time a week, I had to remember the empty times during home education. The empty times in my late teens and early 20s when I was unemployed and struggling to know what my next steps would be. I had to remind myself that all my university motivation had to come from me, myself and I.

While I was at uni, I often mused on how fair it was to expect that most individuals go from the environment of school, where you are coaxed and pushed every step of the way to university, which stretches out like an empty void between the scanty lectures and seminars. This is especially true in the Humanities and Social Sciences, where it is often on the individual to manage their time reading, writing and researching with very little guidance and support on time management.

Getting to that point of frustration and often apathy is usually the only way to launch a creative, playful or intellectual spark, or it certainly is for me. It is not a dissimilar feeling as to when my body wants me to exercise but I have to flop around for several hours, sometimes even days, before I get myself to do a cardio or yoga routine. This might sound paradoxical, but giving ourselves and our children the gift of flexing the boredom muscle could be a really useful one in a day and age that is so focused on doing as opposed to being. We live in an age where boredom is minimal thanks to most of us having 24/7 access to smartphones, tablets and the internet.

I pick up and play on or use my phone far too easily, as a distraction, communication or procrastination device or a combination of all three. It stops me writing, exercising, learning how to play my ukulele, sketching or doing anything else that is considerably more productive. Most corrosively, it prevents me from being alone with my feelings of discomfort and facing myself in new and transformative ways.

As I work to step into my role as a writer and independent researcher, distracting myself with my phone or surfing the internet becomes a way to avoid the work I have always wanted to do. Why is that? The fear of failing at this work that I have always aspired to do. The fear that I will not be able to write, or worse the fear that I will write something boring, God forbid.

The conscious discussions that could come out of it about creativity and inspiration or how to improve our relationship with ourselves? How it could help us meet those strange liminal spaces that happen intermittently throughout life. In the aeroplane when we are told it will be another two hours before take off. The final weeks of a pregnancy when it feels like our due date might never arrive and so on.

Rather than fearing the abject nature of boredom, perhaps we could learn to mindfully embrace it, using it to empower and liberate ourselves and each other. The internet is full of articles about boredom by teachers, psychologists and other experts and yet many of our lives are busier than ever and children’s days are filled from when they wake until when they sleep. Research that should give us all the confidence to be bored as much of it suggests improved creativity, divergent thinking and other necessary 21st century survival skills.

As for the fear of being boring, the state of being bored allows us to honestly reflect on whether we really are synonymous with a second hand, reliable car or other limiting stories that we might be carrying about ourselves. Ultimately, this sticky, tricky, uncomfortable experience of being bored or betwixt and between can give us the space to face the simple truth, that we really are the masters of our fate and the captains of our destiny.

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