When I was a kid, boredom wasn’t just a feeling—it was an ignition.
Nothing on TV? You’d wander. Drift aimlessly. I remember once taking apart a plug, just to see the guts inside. That tiny act of curiosity spiraled into a fascination with wiring. Soon I was feeding cables through the house, splitting the hi-fi system so the music could flow downstairs when my parents threw dinner parties. It started from nothing. From the stillness of having nothing to do.
But here’s the thing: we’re killing boredom. We’ve made sure no one has to be bored ever again. And in doing so, we’re snuffing out the Petri dish where curiosity breeds. Boredom creates the space to tinker, to experiment, to obsess over something for hours, for no other reason than because it’s there. That’s gone now. Replaced by endless distractions. Instant gratification. A relentless flood of content designed to keep our brains on life support.
We don’t create anymore. We consume. We consume garbage and dopamine and whatever else will keep us scrolling. We don’t sit in silence and let the discomfort bubble into ideas. We don't let ourselves feel the weight of our own thoughts. We mute the noise in our heads by cranking up the noise around us. Netflix, YouTube, Apple, TikTok—it’s all there, a drug we mainline until we forget the world exists. Until we forget we exist.
But here’s the real kicker: we know it’s bad. We know it’s frying us. Yet we keep feeding it. Keep doubling down. Keep locking ourselves in bathrooms, scrolling until our legs go numb. We’re losing connection to the world outside the screen. Losing the art of being still, of being human.
Boredom made creators. It built thinkers, tinkerers, inventors. Now, we’re raising a generation of consumers. If we want to change that, we need to let them be bored. Really bored. Let them sit in the silence and feel the ache of it. Because in that silence, something extraordinary might grow. But only if we let it.
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