The Boredom Of Excess
Continuing on from my bemoaning of the loss of consequence, I've been noticing (I think subconsciously longer over the years than consciously now) how we keep trying to spice things up a bit so much of the time. We need one too many a kick from the last one - so much that the only kick that we need now is one on the butt!
Our inherent need for excitement is preceded by the filling up of our lives with boredom. So much boredom that it is becoming inherent enough to become permanently inherent. Just like pills that don't solve the problem, it won't really solve the problem if we have to keep taking them - the plan will never work. These are pills that have society's nod that regular drug taking doesn't have. We can can take million of these as long as it keeps the distance and keeps us from actually coming to a face-to-face encounter with the actuality (and the actual enormity) of our boredom, and the redundancy of most of what makes up our lives.
A case in point is my recent renewal of the regular watching of TV. Some of the shows I get to see being recent teen crazes, I've noticed that if any rightly-brought up teenager bases his understanding of love and relationships (and evilness) on these, the world is doomed to death! It's like as if we don't have enough already love (home, family, friends) that we need to dance on the hot coals of romance as a substitute. Love, if that's what it is, is a substitute for boredom - boredom of any kind. Boredom that's defined by the fact that one's boat is not being rocked, it must be rocked - at least till you're bored of it being rocked like that, and you need a change.
And that goes for any of the whims and fancies that we pursue. They have almost zero consequential value. We are a marketer's dream, the perfect consumer. We are such a bored lot that we make their jobs easier than it should be. It started with us being bored and they were too. Our boredom got the better of us, and our extreme boredom was victimised by their extreme boredom. Hence, we became their playground.
With the empty, soulless, busy-making-as-an-excuse pursuits that we've made ourselves accustomed to, they're having a field day everyday. What's strange is that none of it is intently evil. There is no malintent - just honest intent. Honest, bored intent that's masked so that we don't deal with the actual problem, the root of our boredom - our empty lives, the horror of which we simply turn a blind eye, ear and soul to.
Of course, greener pastures are always more inviting and fun to escape to, but the dry deserts that we've made of our own pastures, that we're ignoring, are built with the resilience that will turn out to be a vengeance plan for us. Soon, those green pastures will soon run out. We won't be able to expand them into our home desert spaces. We'll have to water our own spaces from the bottom up, something we won't be able buy a solution for off' of a supermarket shelf, or even order online. It will be painful.
With the kind of masked, bored living we settle for nowadays, I would say we wouldn't even care. We'd still, like people who have been destined for hopeless fooldom indeed, will rather have an escapist, green pasture that we didn't cultivate while ignoring the dying desert at home. We will do that until the vengeance of the desert throws us into such disarray that we have tear everything down - the entire imaginary world of boredom because we need a home that's built to work, that's built with a solid, strong foundation. And, oh, how distant that home will be then.
It will have a strange closeness to us because it belongs to us, and, once, called to be nurtured like a seed in the ground that sensed its destiny from a million miles away. It asked and we did not feed. We were lured by easier, nonetheless strange ideas that were sold to us. They were sold to us people who suffered, will suffer or are suffering the same fate. Where they originated from only God would know. But they're here now and spreading like a virus. Like thieves who kill for thrill, unstoppable and manic. They leave the spoil to rot, and rot it does indeed. We, the spoil, can choose otherwise though. We always could, even when we were burned and, over time, became numb to the fiery flames.
The calling of our desert at home to be fed or watered never stopped. It only grew louder and stronger. It may have sounded to us lame and desperate, but it was loud and wholehearted. It called not for its own sake, but for the sake of its own - the men and women to whom it is home, hauntingly or indeed, whether a burden they drag along because they can't do away with it or one they love and nurture. If a desert is lost, the desert doesn't grieve. It knows not loss or gain. It is the soul of the one it belongs to that does - whether the cause of that grief is the disdain it is treated with by that very soul or simply it's weight. Perhaps, just maybe, it isn't the desert that calls. Perhaps, it's the soul that's calling out to nurture its ill-forgotten desert home. And, perhaps, that soul, in light of the strange idea of extreme, easy boredom laced with means to ignore it so easily, has been relegated to a place in men and women where it is to be least heard. But, alas, you can't shut down the cries of somethings, more so a cry so pure and true, that it scream out anyway. We can shut it down with those strange ideas that we were sold, rather those that we buy so easily, which come from Only God Knows Where - but not for long.
Yet, since those cries are always sounding, and their truths are haunting us, when this silly idea of escapism and escapism from boredom intertwined gives a little leeway, we can hear them, listen to them and heed them. We can see the reason in them, and the joy in them. No matter how far we have gone succumbing to the boredom of excess, we can still always return to our home desert, water it from the bottom up and let it blossom. We can always turn around, at any point, and discover of nurturing that plant, and the many others, with way, way more effort that it takes to constantly escape from boredom, and produce the joy that a truly happy life brings. Beat boredom, and the falsely over-stimulative habit it taught us to live by, by a million yards or so, at least. The jar of brownie points that it will fill and what it's worth, with all the validation from the world that comes with them, won't have any value when you go to bed at night. Then, it's you and your desert or own blossoming green pasture. All else, all that's happy, will follow.
Our inherent need for excitement is preceded by the filling up of our lives with boredom. So much boredom that it is becoming inherent enough to become permanently inherent. Just like pills that don't solve the problem, it won't really solve the problem if we have to keep taking them - the plan will never work. These are pills that have society's nod that regular drug taking doesn't have. We can can take million of these as long as it keeps the distance and keeps us from actually coming to a face-to-face encounter with the actuality (and the actual enormity) of our boredom, and the redundancy of most of what makes up our lives.
A case in point is my recent renewal of the regular watching of TV. Some of the shows I get to see being recent teen crazes, I've noticed that if any rightly-brought up teenager bases his understanding of love and relationships (and evilness) on these, the world is doomed to death! It's like as if we don't have enough already love (home, family, friends) that we need to dance on the hot coals of romance as a substitute. Love, if that's what it is, is a substitute for boredom - boredom of any kind. Boredom that's defined by the fact that one's boat is not being rocked, it must be rocked - at least till you're bored of it being rocked like that, and you need a change.
And that goes for any of the whims and fancies that we pursue. They have almost zero consequential value. We are a marketer's dream, the perfect consumer. We are such a bored lot that we make their jobs easier than it should be. It started with us being bored and they were too. Our boredom got the better of us, and our extreme boredom was victimised by their extreme boredom. Hence, we became their playground.
With the empty, soulless, busy-making-as-an-excuse pursuits that we've made ourselves accustomed to, they're having a field day everyday. What's strange is that none of it is intently evil. There is no malintent - just honest intent. Honest, bored intent that's masked so that we don't deal with the actual problem, the root of our boredom - our empty lives, the horror of which we simply turn a blind eye, ear and soul to.
Of course, greener pastures are always more inviting and fun to escape to, but the dry deserts that we've made of our own pastures, that we're ignoring, are built with the resilience that will turn out to be a vengeance plan for us. Soon, those green pastures will soon run out. We won't be able to expand them into our home desert spaces. We'll have to water our own spaces from the bottom up, something we won't be able buy a solution for off' of a supermarket shelf, or even order online. It will be painful.
With the kind of masked, bored living we settle for nowadays, I would say we wouldn't even care. We'd still, like people who have been destined for hopeless fooldom indeed, will rather have an escapist, green pasture that we didn't cultivate while ignoring the dying desert at home. We will do that until the vengeance of the desert throws us into such disarray that we have tear everything down - the entire imaginary world of boredom because we need a home that's built to work, that's built with a solid, strong foundation. And, oh, how distant that home will be then.
It will have a strange closeness to us because it belongs to us, and, once, called to be nurtured like a seed in the ground that sensed its destiny from a million miles away. It asked and we did not feed. We were lured by easier, nonetheless strange ideas that were sold to us. They were sold to us people who suffered, will suffer or are suffering the same fate. Where they originated from only God would know. But they're here now and spreading like a virus. Like thieves who kill for thrill, unstoppable and manic. They leave the spoil to rot, and rot it does indeed. We, the spoil, can choose otherwise though. We always could, even when we were burned and, over time, became numb to the fiery flames.
The calling of our desert at home to be fed or watered never stopped. It only grew louder and stronger. It may have sounded to us lame and desperate, but it was loud and wholehearted. It called not for its own sake, but for the sake of its own - the men and women to whom it is home, hauntingly or indeed, whether a burden they drag along because they can't do away with it or one they love and nurture. If a desert is lost, the desert doesn't grieve. It knows not loss or gain. It is the soul of the one it belongs to that does - whether the cause of that grief is the disdain it is treated with by that very soul or simply it's weight. Perhaps, just maybe, it isn't the desert that calls. Perhaps, it's the soul that's calling out to nurture its ill-forgotten desert home. And, perhaps, that soul, in light of the strange idea of extreme, easy boredom laced with means to ignore it so easily, has been relegated to a place in men and women where it is to be least heard. But, alas, you can't shut down the cries of somethings, more so a cry so pure and true, that it scream out anyway. We can shut it down with those strange ideas that we were sold, rather those that we buy so easily, which come from Only God Knows Where - but not for long.
Yet, since those cries are always sounding, and their truths are haunting us, when this silly idea of escapism and escapism from boredom intertwined gives a little leeway, we can hear them, listen to them and heed them. We can see the reason in them, and the joy in them. No matter how far we have gone succumbing to the boredom of excess, we can still always return to our home desert, water it from the bottom up and let it blossom. We can always turn around, at any point, and discover of nurturing that plant, and the many others, with way, way more effort that it takes to constantly escape from boredom, and produce the joy that a truly happy life brings. Beat boredom, and the falsely over-stimulative habit it taught us to live by, by a million yards or so, at least. The jar of brownie points that it will fill and what it's worth, with all the validation from the world that comes with them, won't have any value when you go to bed at night. Then, it's you and your desert or own blossoming green pasture. All else, all that's happy, will follow.
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