I have been reading many times in different outlets and on social media accounts in the past weeks about how we should experience boredom more often and how we would be benefiting from it. Personally, I have the tendency to fill my free time with as many activities as possible. I don’t feel I am just filling blank moments, or that I am trying to get busy to forget about what’s going on in the world. I do it because there are so many enriching activities to do, books to read, movies to watch, that I cannot rest. I try to be in the moment and savour whatever I am doing, be it a walk outside or a group video call, even if sometimes my mind wanders towards the following activity.
All these reflections about boredom reminded me of how deeply bored I was as a child and a teenager. Even though I keep reading that boredom is useful, I cannot stop thinking of how much I felt suffocated and crushed by such boredom. Smartphones didn’t exist, but at the same time we did have videogames, a TV, movies on VHS tapes and books or the phone to call friends. What I didn’t have was the freedom to meet friends whenever I needed – my parents were very strict, I was only allowed to meet them once a week, or the privacy to talk with my friends, as the phone was in the hall and anybody could eavesdrop my conversations, or a dream besides growing up and getting out of that house that I saw as a trap into boredom.
Blabbering of a millennial 