I read an article recently about how social interaction helps us to function at our very best. Our minds are built to connect, to talk, and to share.
But imagine for a second if it all went quiet. Imagine a world where you are just hearing the birds whispering and the oceans clashing; the steady dribbling of the water droplets, the quiet ballet of the falling leaves, the sudden whoosh of a blowing wind.
Imagine there was no music, no movies, no social media—nothing.
We would still find a way to entertain ourselves. We always do. I believe entertainment is out way of escaping that heavy, natural silence. But here is the thing: When the silence starts speaking, the ideas begin to flow. And when we create something to escape boredom, we end up building the exact bridge we need to connect with each other.
It is a full circle moment. We need social interaction to function, boredom forces us to create culture and that culture gives us the very things we need to communicate and interact.
Think about it. It is this desperate need to bridge the gap between us that makes us build human culture. We created Easter and Christmas traditions, beauty pageants like Miss World and Miss Universe. We created wrestling, reality TV, news and gossip, the Dr. Phil Show, City Marathons, and endless series.
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We come home after a long day of work and put on a movie or a favorite episode. And what do we do the next morning? We talk about it. The entertainment dissolves the boredom, and then it feeds our social connection.
I once heard that because there was not so much entertainment in the past, that is why people gave birth a lot! It makes sense, right? People had to find a way to interact.
We make up things just to "happy ourselves" and give us reasons to gather. In winter, we have the Christmas Markets. In spring, the Spring Festival. In summer, we have open-air concerts. In autumn, we find Halloween and Thanksgiving. We are constantly inventing seasons of celebration so we don't have to face the quiet alone.
Some people make it their job to entertain us. And while it looks easy on the outside, it does not always. It takes immense work to turn a lonely thought into a shared reality.
-● A thought becomes an idea which beats a music that is sang years and years on.
-● A thought becomes a surgical step that is learnt decades on.
-● A thought becomes a book that is studied in schools for centuries.
-● An idea becomes a world-famous painting celebrated for years, like the Mona Lisa or a Michelangelo masterpiece.
These ideas live on for generations to profit from. Our thoughts lead to our passion, and our passion leads to the things that bring us together.
In a way, boredom is the director of the movie. He sees the vision from afar and directs the scene. We need boredom to step in. If we are always distracted, the director never gets to call "Action."
The poet Joseph Brodsky once wrote: "When hit by boredom, go for it. Let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom... the sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface." What would happen if we didn’t fear being bored? What if we let ourselves hit the bottom of the quiet, so we could surface with something new?
Like I always say, Ideas are Currency.