Bye Bye Boredom (Another Argument for Modern Technology)

I was once young and busy and often, you know, bored.

It’s not that I lacked stuff to do. I am a New Yorker. But frequently—while standing on a grocery line, in the days when someone had to punch in the price of each item by hand; or waiting on Broadway and 86th to meet a tardy friend at a time when there was no way of contacting anyone anywhere beside their office or home; or on a plane having finally finished “Jane Eyre” with three hours still to go until JFK and no other book in my briefcase—I was deathly bored.

I remember being so bored that to entertain myself I started reciting “two all-beef patties, special sauce…” and the rest of the ingredients in a Big Mac; so bored that to pass the time I tried to think of every U.S. Beatles album from “Meet the Beatles” to “Abbey Road”; so bored I almost wished I was at an Olivia Newton-John concert.

Currently, however, I am old and much less busy but never bored.

This reversal of the normal order of things is in one sense not a reversal of the normal order of things. Very young people were and still are indeed particularly susceptible to boredom. I have grandchildren. I often hear: “What can I do now?”

Still, I think it is a big deal that I—and presumably others of our generation—do not suffer from boredom as an old person but did as a college-age person and as a middle-aged person.

I can’t say it is attributable, in my case, to spiritual progress or a late-life flourishing. I hope it is not attributable to dementia.

I have freed myself from boredom because technology finally devoted itself in recent decades to making sure we have constant access to a robust and steady flow of information and entertainment. You never finish the internet.

Usually, I realize, contemporary technologies—smart phones, streaming services and social media—are seen as the villains of stories about such transformations of consciousness. But they are the heroes of this tale. They are why you can’t bore me.

You can make me wait forty-five minutes to take some medical test that will only confirm that that test was unnecessary, but meanwhile I’ll be on X chuckling over a half-dozen witticisms or indulging in a feast of odd takes that Elon Musk has not yet managed to expunge—unburdened by boredom.

You can force me to stand in a check-out line at Whole Foods so long it blocks access to the sushi area, but all the while I’ll be brightening my friends’ Facebook pages with cute little red hearts, not muttering about the shortage of checkout people, not bored.

The bus, for which I had arrived ten minutes early, in case it was ahead of schedule, may turn out to be ten minutes behind schedule, but I’ll be replaying over and over that contorted shot by Jalen Brunson, which I found on Knicks Twitter, so well-occupied that I almost forget to flag down the damn bus.

And then there are the “shows,” as we call them. Not those platforms for commercials that, I’m told, they continue to broadcast between 8 and 11 on NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox. We mean shows you can stay up to 2 a.m. binging, shows with a storyline that continues not just over episodes but over seasons. And, of no small importance, shows whose existence and merit— “You mean you didn’t know “White Lotus” was coming back for a third season?”—you can discuss endlessly on the phone or over lunch. With good wi-fi and functioning earbuds you now can even watch a show, and be adequately entertained, while waiting for B-83 to be called at the DMV.

Oh joy! Although some do not yet realize we are living in a golden age.

Indeed, now that boredom is evaporating from our lives, some of our Chicken Littles, our Luddites, have—predictably, nostalgically—rushed to boredom’s defense. Their argument, as I understand it, is that quiet, the absence of distraction—in other words, existing in a kind of pre-technology Garden of Eden—is conducive to deep thought.

I sort of get that. I am occasionally to be found amid nature.  I do upon occasion simultaneously push the couple of buttons that turn my iPhone off. Sometimes you do need to step outside the cacophony.

But Thoreau I ain’t. My best ideas, such as they are, tend to materialize in response to others’ ideas, in noisy environments, accompanied by sturm and drang.

The truth is, boredom—the old looks-like-you’ll-be-here-for-a-while-and-you’ve-already-read-every-article-of-any-interest-in-that-damn-magazine—boredom was not only dull and uninteresting. It really, really—to use a term those who came of age in the post-boredom era will understand—sucked.

Boredom was the great deflator. When there seemed nothing of interest to think about, it became hard to think of the world or yourself as of much interest. You squirmed and fretted and beat yourself up. Your mind went where minds ought not go.

Boredom, in other words, turned time, lethargic, obstinate time, into an enemy. Isn’t doubting time’s value equivalent to doubting life’s value?

So goodbye boredom! And good riddance.

Dazzle me, technology: great, inexhaustible technology, life-affirming (yeah, for real) technology! Overwhelm me with images, jokes, gossip, shows, takes, ideas! Engross me! Entertain me! Enchant me! Enlighten me!

Unbore me!