A child started cursing me. On discord. This was abnormal behavior for me. Why would he suddenly start to curse me? That is stuck in my mind. Calling me all sorts of names. And I know this kid and his parents. He is mostly well behaved. He curses but not this maliciously. But this time was abnormal. So I asked him why along with a few questions.

So I teach this class on the weekends though I stopped because things happened and because the class stopped being educational by being mostly entertainment. The child was upset that I was not teaching for a while. There were warning signs now that I think of it. The children being bored in class and wanting things from me. Like driving them to buy snacks. All because I was not forcing them to learn stuff. Because I was letting them have fun.

What I mean to question is boredom itself. What is boredom? According to the dictionary: feeling weary because one is unoccupied or lacks interest in one’s current activity.

I remember hating boredom as a child. Even now I hate boredom though I have coping mechanisms. I believe boredom to be more than just being unoccupied. I believe boredom to be more existential. Maybe not life threatening but autonomy threatening, worse than life threatening.

Let me tell you about white walls. Let us say that you are sitting down and are unable to move. Let us say that the clock ticks, tic tick tic.You are surrounded by white walls. Above, to the left, the right, and behind. The seconds pass, tic tic tic. You cannot sleep. You daydream. You think. But cannot do anything. You are just stuck within these white walls. These sterile white walls. Let us make it worse. Let us decorate these white walls. Let us white wash all the suffering within these white walls. Let us show it as colorful and fun. But white walls. They never leave. The only solution is simple. It is to shut down. To conform and adapt to your reality. The desire to act dies. So does creativity. Symptoms start. Self stimulation. Rocking back and forth. Fidgeting, so forth. They lose the ability to think. Because they trap themselves within their own mind. They conform and adapt to their surroundings.

But some do not do this. They retain their autonomy. They rebel. They fight the system. They hate boredom but do not let themselves trap themselves. I will write a blog post on this later. On the mecha of the mind. You controlling yourself.

So for children who are intelligent, not academically but existentially, are stuck in between these two options. And those who act out in the name of boredom are typically those who are rebels. Well society gives them names like ODD or CD. But they do not care. They could not care less. For them this is a fight, not for their life, nor for their freedom, but their autonomy.

Freedom. What differentiates freedom and autonomy? Freedom is what someone gives you. Children typically refer to school as prison so I will use prison as an example. You are placed in prison where someone takes away your freedom. Despite not having freedom in prison you retain autonomy. Only you can give up your sense of self. That is the danger of white walls. They do not imprison you. You can do whatever you want. But they break you down. Subtly and slowly but eventually. Eventually most conform. At different levels.

Boredom I would say is a warning sign. A call of danger. I want to differentiate the two types. There is the simple boredom which is healthy. It is when you do not do anything and are left to daydream. This has its flaws but is mostly healthy. But when kids act out in the name of boredom, it is not just because they do not have anything to do. In fact they have a lot to do. They have the internet. They have sports. People they can talk to.

If kids nowadays have everything on the tip of their fingers, why get bored? Is it simply them wanting more? Them being spoiled with attention and stimulus? I would say yes to the simple boredom. For simple boredom, they just want the stimulus. They just want the attention. But for the more complicated boredom the answer also becomes more complicated.

What is more complicated boredom? Before I referred to it as existential. But that might not be the case. Maybe it is the desire to escape? Maybe trauma from white walls? When your heart starts to tingle. When your heart feels like it is suffocating. When the world closes in on you. I will still refer to it as existential but the definition is mostly loose.

So stimulatory deprivation vs existential suffocation possibly. Stimulatory boredom is stimulatory deprivation with the solution being access to stimuli. Existential boredom is lack of purpose with the solution being introducing purpose.

Let’s use another method to describe boredom. Good vs bad boredom. Good boredom allows for daydreaming and thinking. Bad boredom is the pain you feel from being bored.

I would say that bad boredom comes from suppressed suffering and such that I will get into more in another blog post that I will write in the future called The suffering child within. Bad boredom can be seen as a certain pain from not doing anything. Meditation only makes it worse.

Another theory that I have is the doors to introspection. Why do people commit introspection? I would argue boredom. I would also say that there is a threshold between daydreaming and introspection. That threshold is the level of pain. To break through such a threshold one must break and rebuild themselves. Or that might just be me. For the rebels they feel the need to act out. Instead of focusing on introspection they act out and rebel in the real world. Meanwhile the broken spend their time daydreaming. There is a threshold. That threshold requires patience and perseverance to break.

Now I am talking about many things. Let us get back to boredom. Maybe the danger of boredom is directly tied to the rebelliousness of the child. If the child does not act out then they are experiencing good boredom and if they act out they are experiencing bad. Though of course this perspective neglects those who conform to boredom and those who manipulate acting out to get what they want, both dangerous.

What other approaches to boredom are there? https://iep.utm.edu/boredom/ I would rather not read all of this.

Also I would like to differentiate boredom and depression. The children I refer to are not depressed at all. They merely act out in the name of boredom.

I am not sure if I should post this blog post on boredom in such an incomplete way. But in life such is fact. We do not know everything about boredom and therefore such an incomplete blog post becomes poetic. I would like to leave with a quote. Something that has to do with the title of this blog post. In the name of boredom. The reason I chose such a title should be self-evident. Nearly every action from children in today’s time appears to be in the name of boredom. Yet they do not even know what boredom is. Nor do we. I believe it to be crucial to better understand boredom. Children in schools are causing more problems. There is more chaos. And only better understanding boredom will better solve such issues plaguing the next generations.