A cruise ship seems like one of the most unlikely places to experience boredom, but also one of the best. There is constant entertainment: reggae bands on the lido deck, hot tubs and water slides, casinos, dozens of restaurants and bars, international and varied menus, in-room movies, exotic excursions, Vegas-style musical reviews, magicians, comedians, dance clubs, 24 hour room service, duty-free shopping, and game shows...just for starters. There is wifi and cellular at sea. There is the perpetual thrum of the engines, the clatter of dishes, and the accents and sounds of 5,000 quests and crew members sharing the same vessel.
And this is where I found boredom. I have x, y, and z, all of these fantastic and stimulating things at my fingertips and at my service, and the heart is bored.
There is hot boredom, which is best described as that restless, antsy, burning-desire to get up and go do something. It may be experienced during a quiet moment when we feel like we’re supposed to be doing something, anything. It may be experienced during meditation as that uneasy vibration within us that makes us want to get up and get out. It is an itch that demands to be scratched. It may be experienced in the midst of activity. It is that hot, nearly irresistible compulsion to go and be stimulated, be entertained, be active, be distracted, be productive.
A cruise is a perfect place to experience this hot boredom. There is little to no personal space (sharing time and room with immediate and extended family), no silence, and hourly announcements audible even in the shower about what activities are underway or upcoming. The first time I sat to meditate in the state room, I felt a tinge of boredom and thought "I’ve paid money to be here, to have all these amenities and entertainments right here, right now for myself and my family, so I better not feel bored." I felt the compulsion for activity and a hollowness and kept asking myself "so what do I want?"
Rather than experiencing the hot boredom, my mind raced: What do I want? What do I want to do? What do I want change? What’s wrong?
So off I went into the ship to shop and eat and do, but as I did the questions changed from What do I want to do? to Why do I want to do? My mind was racing even in the midst of the entertainments and distractions. And somewhere between the penny slots and the coffee and sushi bars it hit...frantic grasping and running from hot boredom.
Hot boredom is a sensation of loss of control. I have nothing to do, nowhere to be, so I have no control. There is nothing, no thing, for me to control to create a sense of solidity and security. There is nothing between me and the experience of the moment, so it feels like I’ve lost my grasp, which throws me into the compulsive and often indiscriminate hunt for any activity or thing to grasp to regain that sense of control.
So I found a seat and stayed with the hot boredom, recognizing it as boredom, and sat. My mind rifled through all the ship’s amenities. I even started thinking about meditation as an entertaining and engaging activity. Slowly the boredom cooled and quieted down and the impulse or compulsion to do do do settled, but the boredom did not vanish. Boredom, like all other mental states, never magically and permanently vanishes. The boredom became what is often called "cool boredom," and as the heat left it, I felt more and more that the boredom was no big deal. Boredom is no big deal, because ultimately there is nowhere to be and nothing to do that creates true solidity, permanence, wholeness, security or bliss, and that is true in everyday life as well as on a cruise ship.
Cooled boredom, I think, goes to the root of the difference between entertainment and pleasure. My wife and I watched "Eat, Pray, Love" several weeks ago and a line about entertainment and pleasure has stuck in our minds ever since: we (as Americans, especially) know entertainment, but we don’t know pleasure.
The difference between entertainment and pleasure seems to be not how we treat a particular object, but how we engage the moment. In cooled boredom the drive to jump to the next activity falls away. Not only does the compulsion to do the next thing fall away, but the thing or activity before me right here and now is not here as the result of compulsion. Food, for example, is often an object of entertainment. A cup of coffee is often marketed in a visually stimulating cup and can be purchased on the way to the next thing to do with the promise of keeping us going to do that next thing. We consume it while doing something else, on our way to do something else, so we can do that something else before we’re on to the next thing we’re already thinking about. In cooled boredom we still have our cup of coffee, but whether we drink that coffee fast or slow, we are drinking the coffee fast or slow with nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, and not as a compulsive activity. When we drink coffee, we just drink coffee.
The difference between entertainment and pleasure is not the lavishness of the object, either. In cooled boredom, whether we are eating a peanut butter sandwich or an expensive meal, we are eating that sandwich or lavish meal because of no compulsion and with no compulsion to get to the next thing. Therein lies pleasure, not as an overindulgence or saturation of the senses by an object or activity, but as full openness of the senses and mind to the moment and momentary experience, with the awareness that pleasure, like all mental states and experiences, is an impermanent thing not to be grasped. The momentary experience is not seen as or expected to be something more or other than it is–it is experienced as impermanent but here, when it is, and how it is, with openness.
Cooled boredom taps us into the space to pleasurably experience the moment as much as it taps us into the openness to stay with painful emotions, fear, and sorrow. Cooled boredom may be experienced in meditation as we just sit because and with no other goal or interest. When sitting, just sit. When a painful emotion arises we don’t bolt off to the next thing to do to make the negative emotion go away. Instead, we sit with the sorrow or anger or rawness. Just sorrow or pain, with no illusion of anything thing or place to grasp to make everything perfect and pain-free. Like pleasure, the momentary painful experience is not seen as or expected to be something more or other than it is–it is experienced as impermanent but here, when it is, and how it is, with openness. Cooled boredom creates space for the moment and for the realization that there is no thing or place out there that completes us and no need to be rushing out of the present to go catch that mythical next ship.
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