Each August I remember, again, to be grateful for all the boring afternoons, the times my parents did not rescue us by providing an activity, the times we were shooed away from the TV, exiled to lands of our own invention.
The soul cannot grow without boredom, which is why so many modern souls are underdeveloped. They have too rarely received the gift of boredom, and so have never aimlessly explored the bookshelf, or dug a hole just to dig it, or dared to walk past the house with the mean dog.
It is essential that the soul come to the bookshelf on its own. One can do all of life’s assigned readings and never truly read. The true reader must come to the books alone, without an assignment, and discover.
This is equally true of the earth and all the things humans have built. School can teach you all about these things, but it cannot give you contact with them if you have not, at some moment, met the world on your own and found it interesting.
This is the paradox of boredom: those who have never been bored will be endlessly bored because they will always need new entertainments.
Especially for the young—but by no means exclusively—boredom is the doorway. On the other side, who knows?
Parents should be encouraged in this. The best parents know not to keep the child constantly busy—even with good things such as sports teams and classes—because without learning to deal with boredom, all the skills the child develops will be attached to a skeleton.
It is better to grow up without television. Maybe adults can live and thrive in a world of television. Maybe. But childhood, true childhood, is undermined by television. Many of the best parts of childhood are invented by the child, and they should be. But the child will not invent worlds, projects, or adventures if he does not have to.
Boredom is the signal to the child to take up his own life, to find out from within how to be alive.
Certainly, there are abusive forms of boredom imposed on children by neglectful or otherwise unfit parents. But normal boredom is good. To deny it to children is akin to denying them exercise. How will they develop without it?
In summer, especially, I am grateful to my parents who, when we were bored, knew enough not to solve that problem for us.